Budgeting for Immigration Enforcement A Path to Better Performance (2011) / Chapter Skim
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7 Conclusions and Recommendations
7 Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 117-128
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From page 117... ...
A new approach to budgeting may allow those resources to be applied more effectively to limit illegal immigration and achieve other policy goals. To improve budget estimates and to support better decisions about the use of budget resources, the committee proposes elements of a new model of budgeting for DOJ immigration enforcement, including changes in the procedures used to develop budgets.
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From page 118... ...
Nature of the Budgeting Challenge Although Congress, in its request for this study, indicated that the Department of Justice has had unusual difficulty in formulating its bud get requests for immigration enforcement, only in a few instances in the past 10 years has an apparent underestimate of funding requirements led to significant requests for supplemental funding or other sizable adjust ments. Only on two occasions, both associated with reorganization of immigration enforcement responsibilities in DOJ, were major adjustments made to its original funding request.
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From page 119... ...
The inherent characteristics of the immigration enforcement system documented in this report, as well as the long lead times inherent in budgeting, cast doubt on whether it is possible to rely on the projection of past trends in activity or to use more complex statistical models to improve estimates of the system's future resource needs. The immigration enforcement system will continue to evolve in unpredictable ways that can change resource requirements substantially over periods as short as 1 or 2 years.
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From page 120... ...
Opportunities to Improve Estimates and Mitigate Surprises Despite the difficulties of budgeting for immigration enforcement, the committee sees opportunities to reduce the number of surprises in the system and to mitigate the effects of those that remain. DOJ's estimates of future resource needs might be "good" or "bad" -- that is, more or less accurate -- given the information at hand, but even a "good" estimate can result in an eventual discrepancy because external forces, such as changes in policy or exogenous factors, might yield surprises.
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From page 121... ...
We compared summary data for fiscal 20082010 case histories provided by DHS with published DHS statistics on "deportable aliens located" and other activity measures: that comparison suggests that the published data exclude a substantial number of cases. For example, the published data apparently exclude people apprehended by the Office of Field Operations (OFO)
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From page 122... ...
Improved data on case histories and analysis with those data to relate policies, strategies, and resource use to achievement of specific policy outcomes would help policy officials and planners better predict how their policy and budget decisions are likely to play out through the system in terms of increased backlogs, changes in marginal costs, and other needed policy or budget adjustments. As discussed in Chapter 6, the committee's examination of case his tory data obtained from DHS suggests it may be possible with more work to construct complete histories of how those with particular characteris tics and personal histories are handled by the enforcement system and their various outcomes.
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From page 123... ...
For any given set of specified enforcement goals, DOJ can develop a range of performance and efficiency metrics to assess how effectively it is achieving those goals. With the minor exceptions noted in Chapter 6, DOJ has not set explicit near- or long-term outcome goals for its own enforcement efforts, nor have DHS and DOJ collaborated to establish policy goals and performance measures for their combined efforts.
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From page 124... ...
Thus, better coordination and communication within DOJ and between DHS and DOJ is necessary to improve both the accuracy of budget estimates and the probability that program resources will be used effectively and appropriately to meet policy objectives. Eight years after the transfer of the former Immigration and Natural ization Service responsibilities to DHS, DOJ's planning and budgeting for immigration enforcement programs continues to be hampered by limited coordination between the two departments.
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From page 125... ...
Linked to the budget process, these requirements provide an opportunity to formalize interdepartmental collaboration to improve performance, as appropriate: this could be a spur for DHS and DOJ to plan and budget together for their shared immigration enforcement responsibilities. CONCLUSION: Given the division of administrative responsi bilities for immigration enforcement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice and given that the effectiveness of enforcement efforts is a combined result of their separate activities, performance is likely to be improved by coor dination of planning and budgeting between the two departments.
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From page 126... ...
RECOMMENDATION 1: As a step toward collaborative planning and budgeting, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security should establish policy-level procedures to plan and coordinate policy planning and implementation to improve performance of the immigration enforcement system and to gener ate better information to improve estimates of resource require ments for system components. The policy-level group responsible for coordination would receive regular, consolidated reports from senior administrative personnel for each border sector and other regions on performance, resource con straints, and other operational obstacles in order to improve operational results.
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From page 127... ...
And the two departments could jointly report on performance, resource constraints, and other operational obstacles to improved results by DHS and DOJ personnel in each border sector and other regions with high immigration enforcement activity. In addition to the above recommendations to the Department of Jus tice and the Department of Homeland Security, we offer recommendations for other agencies that contribute to the budget for immigration enforcement.
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From page 128... ...
A range of mechanisms balancing greater flexibility with accountability for results could be considered. The committee suggests the admin istration and the appropriations subcommittees assess, for example, whether a broadening of the authorized uses of funds appropriated to the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee would provide greater flexibility to reallocate resources in response to unanticipated needs and would further consolidate accountability for resource allocations.
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