Summary: Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data show that during the last two fiscal years, alien smuggling has increased, and INS predicts that the smuggling will continue to grow. INS issued an anti-smuggling strategy in 1997 that contains domestic and international components. The domestic component calls for (1) INS to focus its investigations on major smuggling operations and (2) INS' anti-smuggling investigative field units to coordinate their activities and share anti-smuggling intelligence with each other. INS' initial efforts will be directed at South/Central Texas, which is one of the three major alien smuggling corridors in the United States. The international component calls for INS to cooperate with foreign governments to disrupt alien smuggling in countries that are either major sources of illegal immigration or transit routes for aliens seeking to enter the United States. Several factors may have impeded INS' ability to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the domestic component of its strategy. These factors include a lack of program coordination, the absence of an automated case-tracking and management system, and limited performance measures. INS' intelligence program has been impeded by a lack of understanding among field staff on how to report intelligence information, a lack of staff to carry out intelligence work at most INS district offices, and a cumbersome process of organizing data that does not allow for rapid retrieval and analysis. As a result, INS is limited in its ability to identify targets for enforcement and to focus its resources on efforts that would have the greatest impact. In the international area, INS may not be having more than a temporary impact on alien smuggling overseas. Impediments in this area include corruption among some foreign officials and the lack of laws against alien smuggling in some countries. Without improvements in its programs, INS' ability to disrupt and deter increasingly sophisticated and organized alien smugglers and dismantle their operations will continue to be hampered.
