June 24, 2025 — The Coast Guard only reached halfway toward its goals for intercepting illegal foreign fishing in U.S. waters during 2023-2024, as immigration enforcement and other missions absorbed more resources, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
“Although the Coast Guard recognizes IUU (illegal, unreported, and unregulated) fishing as one of the world’s top maritime security threats, its low interdiction rates and limited enforcement hours show a significant gap between the severity of the threat and the level of commitment required to effectively address it,” according to the inspector general report issued June 6.
In 2023 and 2024, “the Coast Guard estimatedthat it spent $687 million of its appropriations combating IUU fishing. Based on these estimates, we calculated that the Coast Guard spent approximately $5.9 million per IUU fishing interdiction,” the Homeland Security analysts wrote.