The Biden administration did not merely miss a paperwork deadline on visas. Its lax immigration enforcement treated overstays as optional work. A Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report released September 29, 2026, puts the record in one place. OIG-26-38, “In FY 2021–FY 2024, ICE Took Limited Action on Nonimmigrant Overstays, Including Those Deemed High Risk to National Security,” says the State Department issued more than 31 million nonimmigrant visas from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024. They moved through without the normal interview, often without fingerprints, with almost no follow-up, and with little plan for who would stay.
Border officers often were not told who had skipped the screening. A later audit, OIG-25-50 from 2025, found that between March 2020 and March 2024 State issued more than 12 million nonimmigrant visas with no in-person interview and no fingerprints. Port officers treated the visa like any other and let the person in. The inspector general said that gap made it more likely a security or public-safety threat got through. The plan was that if those people stayed too long, ICE would find them. That part barely happened.
From fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024, ICE received 3,145,375 leads on foreign nationals who entered and did not leave. Its Counter Threat Lead Development Unit rated only 104,049 of them, 3.3%, as potential national-security or public-safety concerns. The other 3,041,326 leads, 96.7%, were not flagged on those factors at all. Those ratings do not measure who was still here.
The stand-down was written down. A memo from then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, dated September 30, 2021, told ICE to target foreign nationals only for terrorism or espionage, a serious crime, or a narrow set of recent illegal entries. Applied to overstays, Homeland Security Investigations would work Priority 1 leads and little else. Leads judged viable fell from 20,648 in fiscal 2021 to 415 in 2022, 615 in 2023, and 207 in 2024. Across all four years ICE called 21,885 leads viable, opened 496 investigations, about 2%, and arrested only eight people.
The highest-risk stack was not exempt. Of 1,769 viable Priority 1 leads, the top of the scale, HSI opened 84 investigations, about 5%, and arrested two criminals. One was a Honduran national admitted in July 2022 on a tourist visa, charged the next month in Maryland with rape, assault, and a sexual offense, released on bond, and arrested in September 2023 after he overstayed. The other was a Chilean national admitted under the Visa Waiver Program in September 2023, charged in Florida with credit-card fraud, burglary, theft, and criminal mischief, released, and arrested in February 2024.
People lower on the list were not harmless either. The inspector general’s examples include a Serbian national admitted in January 2021 on a temporary worker visa who overstayed and was later convicted of sexual abuse, and a Bahamian national admitted in August 2021 on a tourist visa, charged with assault and battery, ordered removed, and only then deported. Add the Priority 1 cases and the record includes a man charged with rape. Of 2,837,188 Non-Priority leads sent to Enforcement and Removal Operations, ERO found five public-safety threats, investigated all five, made two arrests, and could not locate two of the cases.
Sanctuary jurisdictions in mostly blue cities made that search harder. Local jails there do not honor an ICE detainer, and the release on bond or from criminal custody is the moment the government loses the person. The audit does not study sanctuary cities. Instead it shows the results of Biden’s reckless approach to immigration: rapists and assailants the government already had in custody were released back into the public to commit more crimes, free from apprehension and consequently unfindable.
The failure to track them was built in from the start. State issued the visas without the interview and, in many cases, without the fingerprints that would have fixed an identity. ICE then received millions of overstay leads and could not generate viable cases because it did not have accurate addresses. Joseph Cuffari put it in one line: bad addresses and too few agents stopped the cases. A file with no interview, no fingerprints, and no reliable address is not a case. It is a name the government let in and then could not find.
The 3.1 million figure is leads sent to ICE, not a confirmed overstay count. The audit also does not claim ICE arrested only eight overstays in four years. The finding is narrower. New cases from these leads were not opened, and arrests tied to them were rare.
On October 5, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin called the record a dereliction of duty. ICE concurred with the only recommendation, a plan to increase investigations of Priority 1 overstays tied to national security, fraud, smuggling, worksite enforcement, human trafficking, or other HSI work. The estimated completion date is September 30, 2027. The Mayorkas memo was rescinded on January 20, 2025. The audit ends before that change can be measured.
The Trump administration’s goal is to uphold the rule of law. At the one-year mark, the Department of Homeland Security revealed that more than 670,000 people have been removed since Inauguration Day 2025. The Mayorkas limits are gone. Overstays are not optional under this administration.
