There’s a backlog of more than 1.2 million cases people in the United of visa overstays , a problem caused in part by information technology that lacks the capacity for the federal government to keep up.
That’s the finding of a report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on IT used by the government that it is regarded as ineffective in tracking foreign visitors who enter and leave the country – and who overstay their visas.
“Moreover, the lag also causes a delay in determining whether a visa holder poses a national security threat,” reports Bob Price on the Breitbart website.
Price, who is based in Houston, tells NewsRadio 740 KTRH that auditors with the Inspector General’s Office at DHS found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations “may take months” to determine a visa holder’s status and whether they are a threat to public safety.
The DHS inspector general, in a statement obtained by Breitbart, says the IT now in place forces ICE personnel “to laboriously piece together vital information from up to 27 distinct DHS information systems and databases to accurately determine an individual’s overstay status” – and the system fails to display “integration and information-sharing capabilities.”
The report also cites the absence of a biometric system -- for photos and/or fingerprints -- and the over-reliance on biographical information, such as names and passwords, in tracking foreign visitors entering and leaving the United States.
“ICE must equip its personnel with the tools and training they require for the vital work of tracking visitors who overstay their visas,” DHS Inspector General John Roth notes in the statement. “Timely identification, tracking, and adjudication of potential visa overstays is critical to ICE’s public safety and national security mission.”
The Breitbart report can be found at http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/05/05/tech-limitations-hinder-ice-enforcement-visa-overstays/.