In November, the agency will pilot a new system in which frequent travelers will be able to scan their fingerprints and travel documents enabled with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology — which transfers data from an electronic tag using radio waves — as they line up at the border checkpoint. When travelers reach the front of the line, a query of several law enforcement databases presents the officer at the inspection station with information on the person’s identity.
“We anticipate there are going to be improvements both for enforcement and for expediting the entry,” said Roger Maier, a CBP spokesman.
The pilot, which Maier said does not have a predetermined length, would allow officials to collect information on the impact of the biometrics and RFID-enabled travel documents on security and time to clear the inspection station. This pilot, the only one of its kind scheduled on the southern border, will inform future enhancements to security and travel at other U.S.-Mexico border crossings.
The El Paso CBP officers see imposters and other immigration violations on a daily basis, Maier said. “With the additional biometrics associated with these documents that will help reduce the frequency and prevalence of that.”
During the pilot, three pedestrian lanes will be equipped with a gated system in which travelers will scan their RFID-enabled document and fingerprints before they approach the inspection station.
More than 3,400 people have enrolled since biometric collection began at the crossing on Sept. 12. “It will be possible for a traveler to get into the line and arrive at primary inspection without having biometrics on file,” Maier wrote in an e-mail. “But that traveler will be referred to [a] secondary inspection area where we will obtain the biometrics.”
Non-U.S. citizens who have an older border crossing card or legal permanent resident card (issued before 2008) or those who have not applied for an I-94 travel permit in the last three years will need to submit their biometrics to participate in this pilot project. If a traveler has been identified as having biometrics on file, he or she will have already been added to the database and there will be no need for the traveler to resubmit the data.
Attempted border crossing by people who obtain legitimate travel documents by posing as someone else is a big problem, Maier said. “They’ll use makeup and color someone’s hair and dress them in the style similar to what’s on the authentic document to try to fool our officers,” he said. “These documents, when they’re linked with a fingerprint … can’t be faked.”
Maier estimated that 14,000-16,000 pedestrians cross the bridge daily, and wait times can vary from 15 minutes to an hour.
Currently travelers seeking to cross the border line up based on the kind of travel documentation they have — passports, passport cards, CBP Trusted Traveler documents, border crossing cards or legal permanent resident cards. When travelers reach the front of the line, they hand the document to the officer who scans it to see if the person has been flagged in a number of databases. While waiting for the result of the scan, the officer questions the traveler to determine whether that person may be allowed into the U.S.
Each interview is a little different based on the questions the officer asks the traveler, but wait times can be significant. “Especially when you’ve got 14,000-16,000 people a day, sometimes it can back up to 30 minutes or 60 minutes or longer to cross,” he said. “We would anticipate that there would be a time savings, but it would be hard to say without running the test.”
