The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency spent $41.1 million more than it needed to deport immigrants from the United States, a new audit by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s office found. The findings were based on 5,699 domestic and international missions between October 2010 and March 2014, where the majority of charter planes weren’t filled with the maximum number of passengers.
The report found that 5,699 of the 7,445 ICE Air missions operated under capacity, with ICE spending $116 million on planes filled with less than 80 percent of the aircraft’s passenger capacity. Domestic missions, like transporting detainees from one ICE facility to another, accounted for 52 percent of all charter flights. Those missions cost more than $231 million.
Flying deportees to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, accounted for nearly half of all international missions. The cost to deport immigrants to just those three countries cost $96 million. Including charter and commercial flights and payroll and benefits, the total ICE Air operation cost came in at $598,232,543. The total cost “may include travel expenses for employees as well as detainees,” the report noted.
The report also found that ICE missed opportunities to improve efficiency, such as not documenting the reason that a detainee would miss the flight, or making redundant multiple transfers for some detainees. ICE Air moved six detainees multiple times between the same cities: One detainee was flown twice between El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, before eventually getting deported to Honduras. Another detainee was put on five different domestic flights before being flown to his ultimate destination in El Salvador.
But in a memo response from ICE to an OIG draft report, Radha Sekar, ICE Executive Associate Director of Management and Administration, stated that “the use of empty seats on charter flights is not a practical measure of efficiency” for two reasons. For one, delaying deportations could result in costs that exceed the cost of empty seats, like keeping deportees in detention at a rate of about $122 per day. Sekar said that there were other factors that could prevent ICE from filling 100 percent of charter flight seats, such as if a deportee became ill and was unable to fly. Sekar also stated that the ICE ERO would work on ensuring that the data was accurate and that field offices would now work closely with DHS headquarters.
By 2014, President Obama’s administration carried out nearly two million deportations, a category that includes those “removed” in close proximity to the border and those “deported” after a court proceeding. A drop in court-ordered deportations came in 2011, when the administration issued a policy of prosecutorial discretion that led to fewer deportations of immigrants who hadn’t committed serious offenses. But the number of people removed at or near the border has gone up. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the vast majority of border crossers who are apprehended get fingerprinted and formally deported.” That process could include being provided transportation back to their countries of origin.