Some aliens, both legal and illegal, who commit removable criminal offenses are released into U.S. communities under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) while they await the outcome of their deportation cases. However, DHS has now admitted that it no longer tracks some of the foreign nationals admitted into the program:
The program enrolls aliens, both legal and illegal, who are “at high risk of committing criminal acts, absconding, or violating the terms of their release, such as reporting requirements,” explained the inspector general (IG) for the DHS in an audit, originally released in February and later revised, on alternatives to detention administered by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
In its recently released Semiannual Report to the Congress, the DHS IG reports that ICE “no longer supervises some [ISAP] participants.’
Therefore, noted the DHS IG, ICE cannot definitively determine how many ISAP participants have absconded or committed crimes after being released.
But wait — it gets better! The DHS IG also revealed that ICE does not re-arrest all ISAP participants who violate the conditions of their release:
“ICE instructed field offices to consider re-detaining noncompliant Supervision Appearance Program participants, but most field offices do not have sufficient funding for detention bed space to accommodate all noncompliant participants,” states the auditor.
The DHS IG also revealed that the Risk Classification Assessment, developed to assist ICE’s release and custody classification decisions, “is time consuming, resource intensive, and not effective in determining which aliens to release or under what conditions.”
The February audit reveals that some 5,000 ISAP participants were either arrested for committing crimes or absconded over a three year period ending in 2012.
