Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 mandates that we track, monitor, and evaluate the Attorney General's strategy to deter illegal entry and report our findings to Congress. In response, we have evaluated immigration-related inspections at land border Ports of Entry (POE) and made recommendations regarding (1) the integrity of the inspections process; (2) the efficiency and effectiveness of inspections-related port operations; and (3) the collection, analysis, and use of intelligence information. Due to concern that the public release of our detailed findings could compromise law enforcement operations, our report is restricted to Limited Official Use. This letter is intended to summarize our overall findings and confirm agreement to take action to address vulnerabilities and inefficiencies in the inspections process. Most of our work was conducted before the Department of Justice's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Department of the Treasury's Customs Service were merged into the newly created Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). However, the issues we address remain relevant as DHS merges the functions previously performed by the two agencies and implements major …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On May 14, 2003, as requested, we briefed Congress on our preliminary views on the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) process initiated by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). On July 29, 2003, we shared our additional perspectives, which Congressional Staff indicated would be helpful to the Commission as it considers the draft National CARES Plan that VA presented on August 4, 2003. For this reason, we are providing an overview of the approach that we plan to use during our continuing review of CARES."