Millions of migrants released into the United States under federal parole authorities may not be consistently tracked once they enter the interior of the country, raising questions about the government’s ability to monitor compliance with immigration conditions across a rapidly expanded system.
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) review finds that the gap between border processing systems and interior enforcement systems has left Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with limited visibility into many individuals who were granted temporary permission to remain in the United States after crossing the southern border.
According to the report, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) granted approximately 2.4 million humanitarian paroles between October 2018 and May 2025.
Those releases came from roughly 10.4 million migrant encounters recorded at the southwest border during the same period.
While CBP systems clearly record parole status at the border, the GAO found that ICE does not have easily accessible or standardized data fields that allow agents to reliably identify many of those individuals once they are transferred to interior enforcement systems.
That disconnect, investigators said, creates a situation in which ICE is responsible for monitoring compliance—such as required check-ins or immigration court appearances—without having the data tools needed to consistently locate or track many of the people under its supervision.
The report describes a system in which oversight often depends on self-reporting by migrants through scheduled check-ins, contractor-managed reporting programs, or electronic kiosks, rather than continuous or integrated tracking across federal databases.
GAO officials noted that CBP expanded the use of humanitarian parole beginning in 2021 under the Biden administration, as migrant encounters along the southwest border surged and reached levels significantly higher than previous years, averaging about 2.2 million annually between 2021 and 2024.
During that expansion, border officials were authorized to grant parole on a case-by-case basis, often tied to operational pressures such as overcrowded facilities or limited detention capacity rather than long-term enforcement planning.
Inside ICE, responsibility for monitoring parolees falls to Enforcement and Removal Operations, but the GAO found that the division lacks integrated access to CBP-derived parole data, limiting its ability to quickly identify individuals who may have violated release conditions or failed to appear in court.
In practical terms, the report warns this means ICE may not always be positioned to take timely enforcement action, even in cases where migrants are required to report regularly or face immigration proceedings.
The GAO recommended that ICE obtain more direct access to CBP parole records and integrate that information into its internal tracking systems so enforcement personnel can better monitor compliance and prioritize cases.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed with the recommendation, though the report did not outline specific implementation steps or timelines for closing the data gap.
NewsNation reporting on the findings noted that ICE has not publicly responded to questions about the GAO’s conclusions or made officials available for interviews regarding the tracking limitations identified in the review.
The GAO ultimately concluded that without stronger data integration between CBP and ICE systems, federal agencies will continue to face challenges in monitoring parole compliance and assessing the full scope of individuals released into the country under the program.
