Biden’s ICE Couldn’t Locate Most High-Risk Visa Overstay Targets—Watchdog - Newsweek

As the Biden administration struggled to cope with an influx of immigrants at the United States' southern border with Mexico, and new temporary arrivals through the country's airports, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was unable to pursue most of its visa overstay targets it categorized as high-risk, a new report released Thursday said.

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) said that between 2021 and late 2024, ICE could not locate most of the nearly 105,000 potential national security or public safety concerns known as Priority 1 overstays, arresting just eight immigrants.

ICE took "limited action" on the 3 million-plus reports of nonimmigrant visa overstays it received during that period, partly because of a directive from then-President Joe Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.

"As a result, foreign nationals who potentially posed threats to the United States remained at large despite their illegal status," the report read.

The report's release comes during a very different time at DHS, with the department actively pursuing those who have overstayed their visas, including arresting those seeking adjustment of status or new visas.

"This report is disturbing and validates the need for the much more vigorous interior enforcement by ICE that is happening under Trump, and also the overhaul of the visa vetting process that has been implemented," Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Newsweek. "The Biden-Mayorkas policies were irresponsible and put Americans at risk. They should have allowed ICE to prioritize far more of these cases."

Newsweek reached out to DHS to ask what had changed in the years since the report's focus and whether it had been able to locate the individuals ICE had not been able to find previously.

Mayorkas is currently a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, where he is holding a study group on homeland security policy. Newsweek reached out to the school seeking comment from the former secretary.

Between October 2020 and September 2024, ICE received 3,145,375 visa overstay leads, the OIG said and categorized about 3 percent as potential national security or public safety threats. Of those 104,049 cases, the agency deemed 21,895 viable for investigation, leading to eight arrests.

The OIG said Mayorkas' memo in September 2021 instructing ICE to target only Priority 1 individuals meant a far smaller group was investigated and arrested.

Priority 1 classification does not necessarily mean an immigrant has a criminal record, but it could mean they have been flagged as a potential national security risk by the U.S. or a foreign government.

"When ICE did attempt to pursue action on a lead, it encountered challenges verifying addresses and locating the foreign nationals present in the United States," the report said. "Further, ICE did not have sufficient resources to pursue all overstay leads."

David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Newsweek that he felt the numbers conflicted with the Congressional Research Service's own findings, which showed numbers started falling in 2020 under the first Trump administration.

"In any case, since nonimmigrants are vetted before entry, they’re almost always going to be a lower priority than people targeted for criminal activity here," Bier said. "This report only includes arrests of visa overstays based on the CBP monitoring, rather than ICE's own investigations. That makes the numbers of limited relevance.

"ICE has found over many years that huge amounts of man-hours are wasted following up on overstay leads on people who moved or left the country when those same resources could lead to more equally high-priority arrests elsewhere."

The report outlines some examples of those high-priority targets, including a Honduran national who was admitted to the U.S. in 2022 on a B-2 tourist visa, who was later charged with rape, assault, and sexual offenses in Maryland. His visa then expired in January 2023, and federal agents detained him in September that year.

Other examples included those in which agents were unable to locate individuals, including a Jamaican national convicted in a loaded firearm case who remained a fugitive because ICE could not find him, and a Chilean immigrant convicted of multiple fraud and burglary offenses who also disappeared.

"The OIG report shows the failure of the Biden Administration's 'worst of the worst' approach. Every agency with limited resources has to prioritize, but the Mayorkas guidelines effectively told ICE to ignore anyone, including visa overstays, who didn't fall within their narrow priority categories," Jeremy Beck, co-president of the immigration reform group NumbersUSA, told Newsweek.

"The result was a record surge in illegal immigration and, ironically, a country more vulnerable to the 'worst of the worst,' who could more easily disappear into a growing illegal population."

According to the OIG, the agency struggled with a variety of issues, including insufficient address information on immigrants who had overstayed their visas. At the end of fiscal year 2024, of 205 people identified as Priority 1 targets, ICE could not refer 194 leads because it lacked address information.

The OIG raised this issue before, in September 2023 and again in March 2025. In the first report, DHS was found to have limited ability to track immigrants once they were admitted into the U.S., partly because U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could not always obtain their addresses before handing cases to ICE—an issue the OIG said had been addressed in the years since.

ICE officials said the agency was stretched for resources, meaning it did not have enough staffing to track and detain all overstay targets.

"I've been analyzing the cases of terrorists who have been removed over the last few years and found that two-thirds of those arrested and removed in recent years arrived under the Biden administration, sometimes on temporary visas," Vaughan said.

Since the era covered by the latest report, ICE has received a far larger budget under the second Trump administration to increase staffing and improve the technology used to track immigrants.

"Yes, Congress has provided more resources at the Trump administration's request, but it would not have been quite as necessary if the Biden administration had not allowed border and visa security to collapse," Vaughan said.

"The increase in enforcement, including more enforcement against people who could pose a threat, is made possible by the additional resources, but should be more effective in protecting our communities because we no longer have policies that force our immigration agencies to look the other way from national security threats."

The report noted that under President Donald Trump, the policies enacted by Mayorkas had been rescinded, with ICE detailing in its response to the OIG that current priorities are different.

"ICE is committed to improving existing capabilities regarding the identification, investigation, reporting, and enforcement of foreign nationals who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their nonimmigrant visa authorizations," the agency said in its response to the report.

“There is no way for ICE and other immigration agencies to locate and deport everyone whose visa has expired and for that reason, every enforcement agency, whether run by Democratic or Republican Administration, has been forced to prioritize who they will pursue to ensure compliance with immigration laws," Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told Newsweek.

"It would be impossible to track down everyone who has overstayed their visa, and polls show Americans don’t want people who have lived in the United States for years with families and jobs to be tracked down and targeted. That’s not good for communities, families or local economies and does not make America safer. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Trump Administration is now doing: targeting everyone and anyone, literally they are going after people who are by no means the so-called “worst of the worst” but instead are contributing members of their communities."

Data on the number of visa overstay arrests under the Trump administration was not immediately available, as DHS has pulled back its publicly available data since January 2025.

"Immigration enforcement protects Americans' economic security as well as their physical security, and administrations that recognize this enforce the law across the board, regardless of additional crimes committed," Beck said. "Any serious overstay strategy must include mandatory E-Verify, so people who overstay their visas can't support themselves by working illegally."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Sam Wilson.