The DHS Inspector General put out a report that reads like an audit of an empty desk. During the Biden years, ICE received over 3 million leads on visa overstays and took minimal action on them. More than 100,000 of those leads involved aliens flagged for national security concerns.

Three million. People who came legally on a visa, promised to leave, didn't, and generated a lead in the system. The machinery built specifically to work those leads mostly didn't move.

I spent 26 years in the Border Patrol and I know the difference between a backlog and a burial. A backlog is when you're short on bodies and working the pile as fast as you can. The IG's finding of minimal action tells you the pile sat. I'll let the inspector general's language stand, because it's damning enough: they had the leads, and the leads went nowhere.

For readers who don't live in this world: an overstay lead is generated when someone's authorized stay expires and they haven't departed. The lead lands with ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations. From there it gets triaged and assigned, at least in theory. What the IG documented was what happens when that system goes unused. The leads existed. The action didn't.

The national security piece should end the argument, though I'm sure it won't. More than 100,000 of the leads in that pile were tied to national security concerns. That's 100,000 flagged individuals where the follow-up, per the watchdog, amounted to minimal action.

You'll hear the usual excuses. Staffing shortages, court backlogs, the pandemic. Some of that's even true. But the IG doesn't write up an agency for being busy. The finding is simple and flat: over 3 million leads, minimal action taken.

The scoreboard, straight from the report: over 3 million overstay leads, more than 100,000 tied to national security, minimal action. Somebody wrote that down in an official government document, and good for them.