Audit Reveals Millions Of Dollars Wasted To Deport Immigrants

by Esther Yu-Hsi Lee

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.

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