Terrorist

Following news reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel implementing Executive Order#13769 (EO) “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”(January 27, 2017) potentially violated the civil rights of individual travelers, we received a congressional request to investigate DHS’s implementation of the EO. In response, we investigated how DHS and CBP, the DHS entity primarily responsible for implementation of the EO, responded to challenges presented by the EO, including the consequence of court orders and CBP’s compliance with them. In our investigation, we found that CBP was caught by surprise when the President issued the EO on January 27, 2017. DHS had little opportunity to prepare for and respond to basic questions about which categories of travelers were affected by the EO. We found that the bulk of travelers affected by the EO who arrived in the United States, particularly LPRs, received national interest waivers. In addition, we observed that the lack of a public or congressional relations strategy significantly hampered CBP and harmed its public image.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) faces challenges in implementing the Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounter Protocol (KSTEP) screening process, which is used to identify aliens who may be known or suspected terrorists. Although ERO uses KSTEP to screen all aliens who are in ICE custody, ERO policy does not require continued screening of the approximately 2.37 million aliens when released and under ICE supervision. We sampled and tested 40 of 142 ERO case files of detained aliens identified as known or suspected terrorists during fiscal years 2013–15. All 40 files had at least one instance of noncompliance with KSTEP policy, generating greater concerns regarding the population of aliens screened and determined to have no connections to terrorism.