ICE Can Further Enhance Its Planning and Oversight of State and Local Agreements

Within the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement met its goal to expand the 287(g) program. However, ICE has not established performance goals that cover all program activities, such as ICE’s oversight of its law enforcement agency (LEA) partners, or measures to assess the program’s performance, such as the percentage of LEA partners in compliance with annual training requirements. As a result, ICE is not well-positioned to determine the extent to which the program is achieving intended results

ICE considers a number of factors, such as LEAs’ capability to act as an ICE force multiplier, when reviewing their suitability to join the program; however, ICE has not assessed how to optimize the use of its resources and program benefits to guide its recruitment of future 287(g) participants. For example, ICE has two models in which LEAs can participate with varying levels of immigration enforcement responsibilities.