The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently conducted a report assessing how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies have allocated resources and established collaborative mechanisms for effective border control operations.
In recent years, GAO was tasked with reporting on a variety of DHS operations in an effort to gauge its use of border security resources. Its most recent report sought to examine DHS’s efforts to implement collaborative mechanisms along the southwest border, along with the agency’s assessment of its use of resources and programs to secure the border.
For each report, GAO interviewed participants from various operations who provided insight into working relationships, resource sharing, and potential barriers that hinder progress.
In February, GAO reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency within DHS, did not record mission data consistently across all operational centers for its Predator B unmanned aerial system (UAS), which limited CBP’s capacity to assess program effectiveness. GAO also found that the agency had not updated its guidance for collecting and recording mission information in its data collection system since 2014.
In January, GAO found that certain weaknesses in their methodology limited the usefulness for assessing the effectiveness of CBP’s Border Patrol Consequence Delivery System, which did not account for an undocumented migrant’s apprehension history beyond one fiscal year. GAO recommended in that report that CBP calculate its recidivism rate by extending the history beyond one fiscal year.
The report also found that CBP had not developed metrics to use the data it collect to examine the contributions of its pedestrian and vehicle border fencing, which GAO said could better position the agency to make better resource allocation decisions and inform mission priorities.
GAO made no recommendations in the latest report, but said it will continue to monitor the department’s progress with implementing previous recommendations.