Audit: ATF keeps spotty records on foreign national informants

By Christen Smith

An audit of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released Tuesday reveals the agency’s messy record keeping leaves government officials blind to the whereabouts of some foreign nationals turned confidential informants.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General audit identified multiple issues with the ATF’s management of more than 1,800 confidential informants between 2012 and 2015 — including conflicting information about the legal statuses of foreign nationals sponsored for citizenship by ATF agents for the purpose of furthering an investigation.
“The use of sponsored CIs in this manner can be especially problematic due to the higher-than-normal risks associated with these CIs remaining in the United States without legal authorization, because they often have criminal histories or are involved with criminal organizations,” the OIG report says. “Because we found that information related to foreign national CIs was not completely or accurately tracked, we were unable to determine whether ATF fulfilled its obligation to coordinate with DHS on foreign nationals with expired sponsorship.”
As of March 2016, ATF officials maintained an electronic spreadsheet of 32 non-citizen informants, however, the audit indicated the document lacked complete data about each informant. Only four of the informants were registered with the National CI Registry as

Source: Guns.com