unmanaged sites

So they're just doing this on their own?  That sounds a bit strange.  Let me ping someone in support to see what they suggest.

Hello I work in the Enterprise Support Departmnet. It sounds like the default policy for that console is set to unmanaged. If I'm remembering correctly when the machines are moved to a different group they take on the default policy of that group, if that group does not have a default policy assigned to it it will take on the consoles default policy. We have escalated this to development and have been told this is expected behavior. 
 
I suggest setting your default policy on the Policies tab to the managed one of your choice. Additionally if you want to change the default policy of one of you existing groups, select that group and click Actions then Edit Group. Here you can set the Policy for that group.
 
Additionally if you use the Global Site Managet (GSM) console you can set the default policy for the site at the GSM level by editing the site (click the pencil icon).

Default policy has been set for each site and saved yet some are still reverting to unmanaged as default.