The General Accounting Office (GAO) has issued a report stating that the Immigration and Naturalization Service lacks the “rigorous and systematic evaluation” system necessary to adequately measure whether the billions of new dollars being spent on border enforcement are working. Thus, the GAO cannot tell whether the INS is achieving its goal of actually reducing the flow of illegal immigrants across the US-Mexican border. The INS also has no systematic way to determine if their strategies are resulting in a decrease in border violence.
The GAO recommended that the INS develop a plan to comprehensively evaluate the border enforcement campaign.
The INS responded that it knows that it is reducing illegal border crossings in the four areas where it has so far concentrated its resources. It can point to increases in the numbers of border apprehensions. Critics, however, point out that the number of apprehensions does not tell you how many people actually illegally cross the border. It only is an indicator.
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