DHS Watchdog: Biden ICE Got 3.1 Million Overstay Leads and Made Eight Arrests

Immigration and Customs Enforcement received more than 3.1 million leads on foreigners who overstayed or broke the terms of nonimmigrant visas during the Biden years and made eight arrests off those leads, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found.

The report, numbered OIG-26-38 and dated Sept. 29, covers fiscal years 2021 through 2024. Just the News published the findings Monday. “From fiscal years 2021 to 2024, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took few enforcement actions using targeted leads concerning foreign nationals who overstayed or otherwise violated their nonimmigrant visa terms of admission,” the inspector general wrote. “As a result, foreign nationals who potentially posed threats to the United States remained at large despite their illegal status.”

The totals in the report: 3,145,375 nonimmigrant overstay leads; 104,049 foreigners rated as national-security or public-safety concerns; 496 investigations opened; eight arrests. Of the security-flagged leads, ICE treated 21,885 as viable for investigation. The 496 cases were about 2 percent of that viable set.

A September 2021 policy change did most of the narrowing. Headquarters told Homeland Security Investigations to work only “Priority 1” leads, defined as the highest threat to national security or public safety. Even inside that box the work was thin. Of 1,769 viable Priority 1 leads, HSI opened 84 investigations, about 5 percent, and made two arrests. The other 3,041,326 leads, 96.7 percent of the file, were marked non-priority.

Visa overstays are a different population from the southwest-border arrests already tracked in public ICE statistics. A nonimmigrant visa holder is inspected at a port of entry, admitted for a set period, and then fails to leave or violates a condition of admission. The leads in this report were generated from those records. They were not a guess about who crossed between ports.

The inspector general recommended that ICE write and carry out a plan to raise the number of investigations and enforcement actions on overstays it has already rated Priority 1. The Trump administration agreed with the findings. The report does not say how many of the 104,049 flagged individuals are still in the country, or how many have since been encountered in unrelated arrests.

This file is separate from the Operation Allies Welcome review RWT reported last week, in which the same watchdog found a 40 percent error rate in Biden-era Afghan asylum decisions. The overstay report is about people who were admitted on ordinary visas and then dropped off the enforcement list. Eight arrests from 3,145,375 leads is the figure the inspector general left on the record.