DHS Builds a Wall of Secrecy Around its Data

Every year, Congress considers many “must-pass” bills that provide funding and set priorities for different parts of the government. These bills normally contain numerous provisions that require agencies to produce reports, keep records, or provide data about their activities. Sunshine, after all, is the best disinfectant and public scrutiny drives good governance.
For immigration in particular, these small reporting requirements are often the only way the public can get reliable information about how their tax dollars are being used. However, agencies have a very uneven record of meeting the directives they’re given. This leaves Congress and the public missing crucial information on the scope of immigration – legal and immigration – that can drive better policy outcomes.
In the waning days of this session and as Congress considers the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, one of the most important “must-pass” bills of the year, it’s worth reviewing how immigration-related provisions in previous defense bills have been carried out.
Given the critical nature and the massive expense of border security to the American people, Congress has asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide estimates on the number of illegal alien encounters. In fact, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, specifically section 1092, Congress required DHS to develop metrics for measuring border security, including estimates of the number of illegal crossings and the effectiveness of security measures.
These metrics are essential for determining if DHS’s mission to secure the border is actually being fulfilled. The metrics sought by Congress include:
- Estimates of unlawful border crossers, gotaways (both known and unknown), and attempted unlawful entries;
- A measurement of situational awareness and effectiveness of each Border Patrol sector;
- A breakdown of apprehension data by demographics and nationality, including the number of unaccompanied alien children and family units – and a probability of detection rate;
- Number of violators that engage in serious criminal activities (such as possessing illicit drugs and weapons, smuggling prohibited products, and human smuggling); and
- The effectiveness of the Consequence Delivery System (methods that punish and discourage illegal entries) for actually deterring illegal crossings, broken down by method.
The secretary must not only devise a method to develop the metrics but also report this data annually so Congress and the American people can know how well their dollars are being spent.
It seems, though, that not even the force of law can make embattled DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas be candid about the state of the border. For example, DHS has yet to release the report on Fiscal Year 2023 (which concluded on September 30, 2023), Thus, the border metrics report is mysteriously absent several months after the normal release window. This comes after consistent releases from FYs 2017 to 2022 and despite annual reports being required by law.
Unfortunately, this is only one of many instances where agencies have slow-walked or outright hidden information crucial to understanding the immigration crisis that has unfolded the last several years. Information on immigration parole, an authority whose abuse has been covered extensively by FAIR, has been either delayed or obfuscated. In both FY 2022 and 2023, sections of those years’ DHS Appropriations Acts directed DHS to publish quarterly reports on the use of immigration parole authority in a timely manner. However, there was nothing timely about these releases, particularly for FY23’s full parole data.
The FY23 year-end report was finished and signed by April 2024 (7 months after the fiscal year ended), but metadata indicates it was published no earlier than July or August. This left interested members of the public in the dark for far too long. For FY24, Congress took a different approach and required monthly updates of parole authority usage with a much quicker turnaround. However, DHS took advantage of the changed language and its new monthly updates fail to distinguish parole from other ways illegal aliens are released. This may seem like an obscure complaint, but immigration parole abuse lets more people into the U.S. every year than legal immigration. Americans deserve timely, accurate information on this massive abuse of executive authority, and DHS is not providing it despite legal requirements.
In addition to congressional directives, other options exist for getting important immigration data into the public sphere. During the first Trump administration, for example, Executive Order No. 13768 required the Department of Justice to publish statistics on criminal aliens. These reports were particularly useful to the public because the data was in many cases not available elsewhere. Unfortunately, these reports and many others stopped publication under the Biden administration and Americans cannot learn about the scope of illegal alien crime as easily. Knee-jerk policy changes like this mean that laws, rather than executive orders, are still much better for compelling the release of data long-term (when they’re followed).
Immigration is one of the defining issues of modern American politics, yet basic facts about it are hard or impossible to find. Congress has spoken time and time again through legislation, demanding that federal agencies provide information on crucial immigration topics to them and the public. It is, in fact, their constitutional obligation to be a check on other branches of government, but they and the American people have been left in the dark. If (not when) that information is published, it is often late or obscured and not useful. A common refrain among those living in the nation’s capital is that we need an “evidence-based” approach to policymaking. However, when that data is simply not available, no one on any side can possibly make our system better.
Support from readers like you is crucial in funding FAIR’s operations. Please consider making a difference with a tax-deductible contribution and join our efforts in educating the public on sensible immigration reform.