Situation Awareness: DHS Office of Inspector General. DHS Semiannual Report to Congress - October 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023

 A Message from the Inspector General

I am pleased to submit our Semiannual Report to Congress summarizing the work and accomplishments of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General from October 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023. We publish this report as the Department marks the 20th anniversary of its creation. The scope of the DHS mission and the breadth of its work have transformed dramatically since 2003, and with it the nature of our mission and work at DHS OIG. I have had the honor of leading DHS OIG since July 2019, and I am proud of the tremendous improvements we have made to our organization. 

Using our Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Workplan to drive performance and measure success, we continue to demonstrate progress in the quantity and quality of our work and the morale of our employees, which is at an all-time high. As we enter into a new decade of service, we will continue to build on those successes. We are grateful to our collaboration with external partners, like the U.S. Government Accountability Office and MITRE, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, for their support in our continuing organizational transformation. 

Our greatest resource continues to be our workforce and the relationships we have with Congress, the Department, and other stakeholders. I am extremely proud of, and grateful for, our more than 750 professional, career employees and their integrity, dedication, and commitment to excellence. 

As we look back on the past two decades, I acknowledge and celebrate DHS OIG’s “plank holders” - current employees who were with DHS during its creation in 2003. We are all grateful for their service and continued commitment to our mission.

In total, during this reporting period, we issued 19 reports containing 79 recommendations to improve DHS programs and operations. Our audit work also identified more than $7.4 million in questioned costs. In addition, we initiated 195 investigations, closed 191 investigations, and issued 172 investigative reports. Our investigative activities resulted in 54 arrests, 50 convictions, and more than $14.4 million in recoveries, restitution, and fines.

We continue to prioritize detecting and deterring pandemic-related fraud. Since January 2020, DHS OIG has received more than 8,000 COVID-19 related complaints resulting in hundreds of high impact investigations. 

To date, our COVID-19-related investigations have resulted in 71 indictments, 21 criminal informations, 41 convictions, and more than $8.5 million in recoveries, restitution, and fines.

During this reporting period, we also reported on a wide range of other high-priority, high-risk areas, including:

•Border Security

•Preparedness and Resilience

•Cybersecurity

•Counter Terrorism

As the Department performs its tremendous mission, we will continue to provide rigorous, independent, and objective oversight, to promote excellence, integrity, and accountability across the Department. 

Thank you for your support of our work

Sincerely, 

Joseph V. Cuffari, Ph.D. 

Inspector General

View Report Here:  Semiannual Report to Congress Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General from October 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023 

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Funding Opportunities. Water Security

 

Funding Opportunities

 

Applications are open for the Lipman Family Prize, which recognizes social impact organizations in the field of improved sanitation, energy innovations, and other areas through August 3, 2023.   P4G has opened applications for partnerships on climate mitigation or adaptation in the areas of food, energy and water in Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam through September 8, 2023.   The FEMSA Foundation is soliciting applications for sustainable development of water resources in Latin America on a rolling basis.

 

'Root Cause' was on the right tract in the beginning. But? ICYMI: Washington Post Editorial: The Biden Administration is Trying to Salvage the Asylum System’s Core Objectives, Not Subvert Them.

Aides lacked the knowledge, skills, and abilities to address the systems approach to the immigration issue with the 'Root Causes' migration in Central America in 2021.

Over two years and still not addressed.  System approach was lacking. 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/07/29/fact-sheet-strategy-to-address-the-root-causes-of-migration-in-central-america/  JULY 29, 2021 FACT SHEET: Strategy to Address the Root Causes of Migration in Central America

Just ask.

BEMA International

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ICYMI: Washington Post Editorial: The Biden Administration is Trying to Salvage the  Asylum System's Core Objectives, Not Subvert Them 07/17/2023 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Office of Public Affairs ICYMI:   Washington Post Editorial: The Biden Administration is Trying to Salvage the Asylum System’s Core Objectives, Not Subvert Them Washington Post: On Biden’s border policy, critics both left and right are wrong   By: Washington Post Editorial Board- 7/14/2023 Uncontrolled migration across the U.S.-Mexico border is not in anyone’s interest except, perhaps, for the smugglers who profit by charging people to make the difficult and dangerous trek. After much hesitation, during which unauthorized attempted border crossings reached an all-time high of 2.76 million in fiscal 2022, the Biden administration acted to stem the flow and redirect it into lawful, more manageable channels. Initial data from the Department of Homeland Security shows progress: Daily Border Patrol encounters with migrants fell from 10,000-plus just before May 11, when the policy went into effect, to 3,400 in early June. Set forth in regulations finalized May 10, the plan seems to be preventing the border chaos many had feared would follow expiration of emergency powers under Title 42, a public health law that had allowed federal authorities to expel migrants summarily during the pandemic. There’s a catch, though: President Biden’s policy has to be consistent with federal law. And critics from both ends of the political spectrum have gone to federal court arguing that it’s not. On July 19, a judge in Oakland, Calif., is set to hear a coalition of immigrants’ rights advocates, headed by the American Civil Liberties Union, who claim, in effect, that the Biden plan unlawfully truncates the right to asylum. Meanwhile, red states, headed by Texas, accuse the administration of the opposite: letting in hundreds of thousands of migrants without sufficient legal authority. The courts should let the administration’s approach, which includes a two-year time limit, run its course. Some of the legal arguments against it are serious. Yet, so is the Biden administration’s case: that the president is trying to address a major problem through a pragmatic exercise of his existing authority. Essentially, the new policy offers migrants incentives and disincentives — carrots and sticks — the net effect of which is to discourage irregular border-crossing. The disincentive, framed as a “rebuttable presumption” against entry, is swift expulsion and a five-year bar on reentry for those who cross between ports of entry without first seeking asylum in a third country en route. The incentive is that these tough conditions do not apply to migrants who first make appointments using a cellphone app to apply for asylum at ports of entry and wait in Mexico for their turn. The rule contemplates advance processing for asylum in a third country as well. Separately, it offers 30,000 people per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti — main sources of the 2022 border surge — direct access to the United States via two-year humanitarian parole, provided they have a U.S. sponsor. The ACLU-led suit, however, characterizes Mr. Biden’s policy as a replay of President Donald Trump’s pre-covid attempt to impose a flat ban on asylum for border crossers who transited a third country, which federal courts on the West Coast had blocked, calling it a violation of a 1980 statute providing “any alien physically present in the United States” with a right to seek asylum. The Biden administration differentiates its plan, citing the fact that migrants may rebut the presumption that they should be denied entry and that the new system provides alternative pathways to legal entry. It therefore qualifies as a “condition” on asylum-seeking, the administration argues, of the kind a separate provision of immigration law permits. To be sure, the ACLU-led lawsuit complains that glitches in the asylum appointment app prevent many from taking advantage of it, but a June 6 DHS statement noted that it had enabled more than 1,000 asylum seekers a day since May 12 to present themselves at ports of entry. The department recently announced an increase in the number of such spaces available to 1,450 per day. A half-million people a year could seek asylum through this channel. The gist of the Republican-led states’ objections is that both the app and the use of humanitarian parole to admit migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti create new visa programs without congressional authorization. The Biden administration argues that there is still case-by-case consideration of each applicant for parole and that the program fits the law’s requirement that humanitarian parole provide significant “public benefit” — in this case, steering migrants away from the border. Ironically, given their opposite ideological perspectives, the administration’s opponents both urge the courts to take a strict textualist view of the law, whereas the administration — persuasively, in our view — insists on consideration of real-world circumstances and the government’s intentions. This is not a replay of Mr. Trump’s policy but a pro-immigration president’s effort, as the government’s brief in the ACLU-led lawsuit puts it, “aimed at safeguarding the ability of the immigration and asylum system to function effectively in the face of an anticipated dramatic increase in border encounters — and at ensuring that the government’s limited resources are used in the most efficient and equitable way.” The Biden administration is trying to salvage the asylum system’s core objectives, not subvert them, via a program that is balanced and time-limited. It acknowledges, as a DHS statement recently put it, that a permanent fix will require Congress “in a bipartisan way to address our broken immigration and asylum system.” Meanwhile, judges should not make the job harder than it already is. ###

AI. Ethics of artificial intelligence

 Awareness, Education, and Training.

The ethics of artificial intelligence is the branch of the ethics of technology specific to artificially intelligent systems.^[1] 

It is sometimes divided into a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, make, use and treat artificially intelligent systems, and a concern with the behavior of machines, in machine ethics.

The Three Laws of Robotics. Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D

 The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:^[1]

First Law[edit]

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law[edit]

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law[edit]

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.