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Summary
I
mmigration enforcement is carried out by a complex legal and admin-
istrative system, operating under frequently changing legislative man-
dates and policy guidance, with authority and funding spread across
several agencies in two executive departments and the courts. The U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for conducting
immigration enforcement both at the border and in the United States; the
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is responsible for conducting immigra -
tion removal procedures and criminal trials and for prosecuting people
charged with immigration-related crimes. In Congress, three separate
appropriations subcommittees have jurisdiction for elements of the immi-
gration enforcement system.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, and
Science, concerned that budget requests for immigration enforcement
had not been well supported in recent years, directed DOJ to enlist the
National Academy of Sciences to recommend improved budgeting for
immigration enforcement.
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS
Apprehensions by DHS and decisions about how apprehended indi-
viduals are handled largely drive the demand for DOJ’s enforcement
activities. These decisions include potential prosecutions by U.S. attorneys
and status determinations and removal orders by immigration judges, as
well as administrative decisions on the number subject to pretrial deten -
1
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2 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
tion, incarceration, or requiring court security and transportation by U.S.
marshals. Decisions by DHS to allow fewer apprehended immigrants to
be returned to their countries of origin voluntarily without civil or crimi-
nal processes have increased the workload of DOJ’s parts of the immigra-
tion enforcement system, despite a sharp decline in total apprehensions.
The flows of unauthorized entrants across the southern U.S. border
have declined since 2000, most likely as a result of changes in U.S. eco-
nomic conditions and Mexican demography, among other factors. The
increased probability of or greater severity of sanctions for those appre -
hended has not been a major cause of the decline. Budget decision making
is hampered by lack of analysis about the actual deterrent or other effects
of specific sanctions or other DHS and DOJ actions.
In 2003-2010, only a few sizable adjustments were sought to the origi -
nal appropriated amounts to DOJ, in spite of significant changes in work-
load demands. This lack of requests for changes appears to reflect in part
the ability of administrators at both national and local levels to adjust
their operations to whatever level of resources is available. That is, prob-
lems in estimating resources for immigration enforcement are more likely
to manifest themselves as changes in operations (and possibly service
quality and enforcement effectiveness) than as requests for supplemental
appropriations or other spending adjustments.
The accuracy and timeliness of budget estimates—developed up to 2
years in advance of the fiscal year for which appropriations are made—are
affected by all the usual limitations of any financial forecast and by some
limitations specific to estimating resource needs for immigration enforce -
ment. The complexity of the immigration enforcement system also limits
the utility of standard modeling methods for predicting budget demand.
DOJ confronts at least five technical challenges to modeling its
resource needs for immigration enforcement that are specific to the immi-
gration enforcement system:
1. the nonlinearities arising from the nature of “queuing” for ser-
vices at various points in the enforcement process;
2. adaptive behavior by both enforcement agencies and immigrants;
3. jurisdictional complexity and dispersal of decision-making
responsibility;
4. uncertainty from sources out of DOJ’s control such as DHS policy
shifts and changing migration patterns; and
5. the limits of available data on costs and effectiveness.
Therefore, in responding to its charge to “develop a robust approach
or model to predict future DOJ costs . . .” and having concluded that it
is impractical now or in the foreseeable future to specify and estimate a
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3
SUMMARY
statistical model of the enforcement system useful for budgeting, the com-
mittee undertook to describe a new approach to budgeting for immigra-
tion enforcement, requiring new data and analyses and new institutional
relationships and procedures. (See Box 1-1 in Chapter 1 for the complete
Statement of Tasks.)
RECOMMENDATIONS
Despite the inherent limitations, budgeting for immigration enforce-
ment can be improved by changing the method for budgeting. Improve-
ment should be measured not simply by whether estimates included
in budget requests prove sufficient to support planned and proposed
operations, but also by the contribution to better decisions about the cost-
effective use of resources to achieve the stated objectives of immigration
enforcement policies.
Both technical and institutional changes in budgeting procedures can
improve budget estimates and contribute to better performance. Techni -
cally, further development and use of data on individual case histories of
those subject to enforcement can shed light on relationships between cur-
rent and alternative resource uses and system performance. Institution -
ally, as systems are integrated within DHS and if DHS and DOJ develop
procedures for sharing case history information, system flows can be
constructed and used for analysis by each department, or the two jointly,
of the cost-effectiveness of different methods and strategies for immigra -
tion enforcement.
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.
RECOMMENDATION 2: On the basis of a recurring policy-level
review and guidance, the Department of Justice and the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security, in consultation with staff of the federal
courts, should coordinate their preparation of annual budget sub -
missions and estimates for presentation to the Office of Manage -
ment and Budget.
RECOMMENDATION 3: The Department of Justice and the
Department of Homeland Security should accelerate their design
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4 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
of an integrated capacity to track cases and project immigration
enforcement activity—including the volume and timing of major
flows—based in part on frequently updated analyses that integrate
case histories of people encountered as illegal entrants or residents
and the progress and disposition of each case.
RECOMMENDATION 4: The Office of Management and Budget
should direct the Department of Justice and the Department of
Homeland Security to coordinate their policy development, plan-
ning, and budget development processes to ensure that resource
requirements match policies and strategies chosen to achieve
specified performance targets and to increase the productivity of
resources dedicated to immigration enforcement.
RECOMMENDATION 5: The administration should consider using
the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Mod-
ernization Act of 2010 to establish one or more cross-cutting federal
priority objectives related to immigration enforcement and border
security; to assign a lead person responsible for these objectives;
and to develop strategies, plans, reporting, and budgeting require -
ments needed to support accomplishment of these objectives.
RECOMMENDATION 6: The staff of the congressional appropria-
tions subcommittees with funding responsibility for the Depart -
ment of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the ele -
ments of the courts that are part of the enforcement system should
consult with each other regularly as they develop their annual bills.
