Budgeting for Immigration Enforcement A Path to Better Performance (2011) / Chapter Skim
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5 Budgeting for DOJ Immigration Enforcement
5 Budgeting for DOJ Immigration Enforcement
Pages 73-94
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From page 73... ...
components of the immigration enforcement system and its outcomes to answer the following questions1: • What is the observed pattern of budget estimates in the past decade? • Is there a pattern of large changes, requiring adjustments in the amounts requested or appropriated, or reprogramming within appropriated totals, after the initial budget request?
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From page 74... ...
At a headquarters level, coordination of the resource needs of these DOJ immigration enforcement components both in the department and with DHS agencies has most often been on an ad hoc basis, and at times it has been close to nonexistent.
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agency, will total an estimated $15.4 billion in the same year; However, an estimate of what portion of that total amount will be used for immigration enforcement is not available.3 These two DHS agencies and their DOJ immigration predecessor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) , have dramatically stepped up immigration 2 Because the agency budgets primarily involve funding for personnel and support and contracts for detention and medical services from nonfederal sources, nearly all of these obligations would result in outlays (cash disbursements)
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Total Estimated Immigration Enforcement Obligations, DOJ 2,070.1 NOTES: Estimates based on share of workload attributable to immigration enforcement related activities of these five DOJ agencies. Excludes construction activities of the U.S.
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Although the 94 U.S. attorneys offices account for only a very small portion of DOJ's immigration enforcement budget, the number of criminal proceed ings involving immigration offenses has been rising sharply, particularly in offices located along the Southwest border.
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77.7 Transfer 31.3 Rescission –8.6 Federal Prisoner Detention, United States Marshal Service President's budget 597.4 724.7 Regular appropriation 597.4 706.2 Salaries and Expenses, United States Marshals Service President's budget 586.5 619.8 722.2 720.8 Budget authority (regular appropriation) 572.7 619.4 680.5 719.8 Supplemental 0.0 10.2 8.0 0.0 Construction, U.S.
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79 BUDGETING FOR DOJ IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 938.8 1,222.0 1,332.3 1,294.3 1,295.3 1,438.7 1,533.9 886.0 1,222.0 1,225.8 1,225.9 1,295.3 1,438.7 1,518.7 184.0 60.0 7.0 0.0 20.0 –11.8 –15.0 –145.0 3.0 742.1 790.3 825.9 899.9 933.1 1,138.4 1,180.5 752.0 793.0 808.0 864.2 950.0 1,125.8 1,125.8 12.0 9.0 0.0 28.6 10.0 29.7 0.0 1.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 14.0 26.6 5.7 8.9 6.8 2.3 4.0 26.6 16.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 8.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 202.5 216.3 229.2 247.5 263.8 300.7 319.2 204.0 215.7 228.1 232.6 270.0 300.7 300.7 2.1 1,547.5 1,626.2 1,664.4 1,747.8 1,831.3 1,926.0 2,041.3 1,547.5 1,600.0 1,645.6 1,754.8 1,836.3 1,934.0 1,934.0 9.0 5.0 9.2 4,706.2 4,895.6 4,987.1 5,151.4 5,435.8 5,979.8 6,533.8 4,628.0 4,892.6 4,974.3 5,050.4 5,595.8 6,086.2 6,295.0 5.5 17.0 187.1 20.0 109.2 12.6 continued
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attorneys in a larger "Southwest Border" enforcement initiative in their budget requests to Congress, although the increased funding received was to be targeted at a range of law enforcement problems, not just immigration.
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Executive Office for Immigration Review The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is focused entirely on an immigration enforcement related mission -- primarily civil proceedings in immigration courts that lead to removal of illegal residents.
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EOIR received two small supplemental appropriations in 2002 and 2010, but its budget was not the subject of rescissions or reprogramming actions during this period. DOJ routinely cited ongoing initiatives undertaken by DHS and its two lead immigration enforcement agencies, CBP and ICE, as support for the continuous growth in the budget for immigration judges.
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Interestingly, the 2001 committee report envisioned an office that would do for detention "what the Wireless Management Office has done to remedy the problems with law enforcement communications systems." The committee noted the similarity between detention and law enforcement communications in terms of "regional hot spots" and directed the new trustee to set up two pilot projects on the Southwest border and in the Midwest to test and demonstrate the improved coordination that the trustee could bring to the detention function (U.S. House of Representatives, 2000b)
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Immi gration enforcement resource needs have played a major role in driving budget changes. OFDT received two supplemental appropriations ($40 million in 2003 and $184 million in 2005)
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Depart ment of Justice, 2009) , the agency noted that it had experienced "funding shortfalls" in 2008 and 2009 that it attributed to "increased unfunded immigration enforcement activity by the Department of Homeland Security at the Southwest Border, which began in FY 2008 and continues through FY 2009." The initial 2008 appropriation for OFDT was itself unusual, as the statutory language first provides $1,225 million -- below the administration's request but virtually the same amount as 2007 -- and then, in the next paragraph, rescinds or takes away $145 million of that appropriation.8 Congress subsequently found it necessary to approve the department's request for a $20 million reprogramming from its Asset Forfeiture Fund for OFDT in 2008.
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Yet despite both the creation of OFDT and the improved forecasting abil ity that this office has brought to budgeting for the detention function, the budget process for this program has, as described above, been characterized by a series of upward and downward swings in actual resources available to the agency.
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From page 87... ...
However, only in the case of the most recent $37.7 million -- included in the Southwest Border Enforcement Initiative supplemental appropriation for 2010 -- was funding provided specifically to cover immigration-related expenses, and even in that instance the supplemental resources were targeted more heavily to wartime and antiterrorism objectives (such as witness security in Afghanistan)
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needed to handle surges in bookings and subsequent detention requirements, as well as cases of excess resources at the start of the year reflected in carryover bal ances and, in one instance, a major rescission. Viewed from a broader perspective, perhaps the biggest challenges in immigration enforcement policy that affected the budgets of DOJ agen cies -- particularly OFDT, USMS, and the immigration judges -- in the past decade were a product of increases in enforcement efforts and changes in enforcement policies by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies in DHS.
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However, as discussed above, the internal coordination of detention budget estimates among immigration enforcement agencies that was overseen by the Deputy Attorney General prior to 2002 fell away after the creation, first, of the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee and then the Depart ment of Homeland Security. The lack of such a coordinating body in the executive branch, and the apparent failure of OMB to completely fill this void (see below)
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Consequently, it is difficult to promote more spending for certain programs even if rational coordination of the overall government immigration enforcement effort would suggest the value of such coordination, particularly when an enforcement initiative has been approved for DHS, for example. Effective, timely coordination and communication among the vari ous personnel and agencies involved in the budget process can improve information used as a basis for decision.
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THE BROADER BUDGET CONTEXT To the outside observer, the budget history over the 2001-2010 period of the five DOJ agencies with immigration enforcement responsibilities does not seem particularly dramatic or unusual. Immigration enforce ment was a growing priority of successive administrations and Congress, which created continuing pressure for more resources to address the effects of heightened enforcement activity, especially by DHS agencies, on the five DOJ agencies.
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Planning with the long lead times involved in the federal budget process inevitably leads to unanticipated changes driven by both external developments and internal reassessments of resource allocation decisions. A natural question is whether a more formal coordinating process and set of budget estimating procedures would have affected the outcomes observed over the past 11 years or the likely course of future budget allocations for federal immigration enforcement functions.
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From page 93... ...
93 BUDGETING FOR DOJ IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT dinating mechanisms among the immigration enforcement agencies. In the current stringent budgeting environment for domestic discretionary federal agencies, heightened competition for resources among the agencies and continuing demands to meet multiple priorities may make such coordination more important, although also more challenging.
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