Untold numbers allowed into US without biometric screening

For four years, from 2020 through 2023, the U.S. State Department, with the concurrence of top U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership, granted nonimmigrant visas to at least 7.1 million individuals without first conducting required in-person consular interviews and biometric collection.

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been found to be incapable of biometric matching of travelers arriving in vehicles at U.S. land ports of entry (POEs).

DHS’s Inspector General (IG) says it’s unknown how many nonimmigrant visa applicants escaped having to provide biometrics as required by law. The IG made the revelation in a redated June 24 “Law Enforcement Sensitive” memorandum to Troy Miller, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner of CBP.

While the fingerprint waiver program for nonimmigrant visa applicants ended in December, DHS’s IG found CBP Office of Field Operations (OFO) port directors at some U.S. ports of entry (POE) had been unaware of the waiver program for as long as four years.

The IG said the State Department didn’t start providing DHS with information on visa holders who did not receive interviews or biometric collection until March, and that while CBP OFO leadership had “alerted” the directors at POEs that inspection information technology systems now include this information as part of an individual’s record, only CBP officers conducting secondary screenings of individuals arriving at POEs have access to these records.

“Because consular interviews can be an important mechanism for collecting information from visa applicants to verify identity and determine admissibility before they arrive in the United States, having knowledge of who was waived and who was not could allow CBP officers to make more informed decisions,” the IG said.

Without this information, POE officers also can’t be certain whether a person has been properly vetted beforehand.

The disturbing discovery comes on the heels of, and compounds, the DHS IG having also found that DHS’s technology, procedures, and coordination have not always been completely effective in screening and vetting persons applying for admission into the US, and asylum seekers whose asylum applications have been pending for an extended period.

CBP officers at U.S. ports of entry are responsible for verifying whether a person seeking entry into the U.S. is the person he or she says they are. CBP officers screen all foreign visitors and returning U.S. citizens at all 328 officially designated ports of entry.

CBP POE officers capture and cross-reference biometrics; physically review identification such as passports or permanent resident cards; and query biographic and biometric data against DHS and other federal databases to identify derogatory information and border crossing history which could alert officers that a particular person poses an undue security risk.

Nonimmigrant VISA applicants are made by individuals who seek to enter the US on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, business, temporary work, study, or other reasons.

Individuals 14 to 79 who apply for a nonimmigrant visa are required to submit biographic and biometric information like fingerprints and photographs, which are reviewed and inputted into a database by an officer of the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs at the time of the required interview. Only the Secretary of State can waive the requirement for the in-person interview, or the taking of fingerprints, if a waiver is deemed to be in the national interest.

The Bureau of Consular Affairs is the State Department office that’s responsible for screening and vetting foreign nationals applying for entry on a nonimmigrant VISA.

CBP officers rely on the understanding that background screening and biographic information has already been verified by the State Department.

The State Department’s “processes for reviewing visa applications helps assure CBP that an individual’s identity, background, and biographic information have been verified before they arrive in the United States,” DHS’s IG stated, adding, “It is important for CBP to maintain awareness of exceptions to this process, such as who was waived and who was not.”

To make matters worse, DHS’s IG discovered that in December DHS and State Department agreed to expand the categories of visas and applicants whose consular interviews could be waived beginning January 1. The biometrics waiver program was terminated in December. Some CBP POE directors though were never made aware of the interview and biometric waiver program.

It wasn’t until three months ago –after four years – that the State Department finally began to provide CBP with information on visa holders who did not receive interviews, or who weren’t fingerprinted.

The required in-person interviews and collection of fingerprints of more than 7 million visa holders were waived because of circumstances associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and, because the State Department said it had a large volume of visa applications which outweighed its resources to deal with.

Members of both House and Senate committees that oversee the State Department have expressed in private that if the State Department knew it was understaffed and under-resourced, the Biden administration should have requested from Congress a supplemental funding bill to address the problem, which the committee members said constitutes a national security risk.

The State Department nevertheless argued that the waivers should not only be renewed, but expanded. The DHS IG said State department officials said that because of the growing worldwide demand for visas this year and beyond, waiver authority needs to be expanded.

In the months preceding the waiver authority expiring in December, the State Department sought concurrence from DHS to broaden the visa categories eligible for waivers to include first-time nonimmigrant visa applicants from countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program; and for first-time and returning H-2 visa applicants who qualify for interview waivers. H-2 visas allow applicants to work in temporary jobs in agriculture, construction, forestry, and other industries. The H-2A visa is for temporary agricultural jobs, while the H-28 visa is for temporary non-agricultural jobs.

DHS opposed the extension, and in response the State Department agreed to stop waiving fingerprint collection for H-2 visa applicants, and to inform DHS which visa applicants were not interviewed. It also agreed to provide a security and terrorism risk assessment of continuing the waivers.

To date, however, all CBP POE officers still do not have full access to information on who was granted a visa interview waiver, including those persons who were waived from providing their biometrics.

“CBP does not have the system capability to gather information on individuals who were granted visa interview and fingerprint waivers prior to March 2024,” the IG said. And “as a result, more than four years after the waiver expansion began, CBP has no assurance that individuals with waivers who arrived at U.S. ports of entry from 2020 through 2023 were identified” as needing “further screening.”

“Prior to March 2024, CBP OFO did not inform its port directors that [the State Department] had been waiving certain requirements for interviews and fingerprints,” the IG said, noting that of the 16 POE directors interviewed, “all reported that they were unaware that some visa holders had not received consular interviews nor had their fingerprints collected before being issued their visas. In our discussions, half (eight) of the port directors told us that even if they had known, they would not have altered their inspection process.”

The IG said these port directors “emphasized that visa holders with waivers are subjected” to the same screening process as any other visa holder. “However,” the IG pointed out, “the other eight port directors stated that knowing certain visa categories were exempt from interview and fingerprint requirements may have been beneficial in alerting CBP officers that an individual may require additional screening and vetting.”

CBP officials told the IG that they did not want POE officers conducting primary screening to send all individuals whose requirement for consular interviews had been waived to secondary screening and thus “inundate” the process until they have had the time to assess the information and determine the level of risks.

“CBP OFO officials told us that no formal notification was provided to the Field Offices and frontline officers because CBP did not want to overload the officers with information,” the IG said. “Further, they added that CBP receives hundreds of alerts each day, but officials must prioritize what information is shared with frontline officers.”

In lieu of providing CBP POE officers conducting primary screening with access to the information, CBP OFO officials told the IG they plan to work with the National Targeting Center to identify risks, if any, posed by visa holders who had their interviews waived.

The IG said although this proposed action differed from CBP’s prior statements that it needed the waiver information for its officers conducting primary inspections, it encouraged CBP “to use all

available resources to evaluate potential risk,” and that “because of the importance of this issue, we will continue to monitor CBP’s progress in working with the National Targeting Center or in establishing other means to manage [the] risks.”

While CBP begins to evaluate the data on which individuals received interview waivers, it can still take actions to mitigate potential risks,” the IG said, adding that “developing strategies to address potential risks would better position CBP to carry out its mission of keeping the homeland safe.”

CBP leadership disagreed with the IG’s conclusions, including the IG having posted a “Management Alert” on the OIG website.

CBP’s position is the State Department’s decision to waive a visa applicant’s interview or biometrics during the visa issuance process did not change how CBP POE officers conduct screenings. CBP said all travelers, regardless of whether they received a waiver, are inspected by CBP when they reach a U.S. POE to include an interview, biographic and biometric vetting, and that the presence of a waiver for any given person is only “supplemental information” that isn’t critical to assessing a potential national security threat.

Lawmakers who set on both the House and Senate oversight committees who’ve been briefed on this matter are said to not be very satisfied with the current CBP leadership’s response to the DHS IG’s findings and conclusions.

“It’s not at all adequate,” one is said to have remarked during a recent closed-door meeting, the date of which wasn’t specified.

Several former top CBP officials who asked not to be identified because of the consulting work they now do as private citizens, told Biometric Update they also are concerned about CBP leadership’s “apparent lackadaisical attitude” toward this “gap in fundamental security,” as one put it. The former officials expressed their opinion that this situation would not have been tolerated under previous leadership. They declined to identify who they were referring to.

Meanwhile, DHS’s IG revealed that CBP does not have the technology required to perform biometric matching of travelers arriving in vehicles at land ports of entry. The IG said CBP has deployed a facial comparison biometric capability at only land POE pedestrian lanes. It does not have biometric capability for travelers in vehicles.

“Instead,” DHS’s IG said, “CBP officers must manually verify the identities of travelers in vehicle lanes by comparing their faces against travel documents, such as a passport, or file photos already stored from previous encounters, potentially limiting the efficiency and effectiveness of traveler processing.”

DHS’s IG said this security gap exists “because CBP has been unable to identify a viable camera solution to reliably capture vehicle travelers’ facial images in real time, although CBP has been working on the problem since 2017.

CBP officials say capturing quality images of vehicle travelers is difficult because of the multitude of inherent problems that are not experienced in other POE environments. For example, CBP says human behaviors — such as passengers looking down, lying down, or wearing sunglasses or hats — can hide or obstruct people’s faces, and that other image obstructions include light glare, dirty windshields, and vehicle door frames.

But CBP also blames its inability to fully implement biometric facial recognition technology at land POEs to a lack of funding. In 2016, Congress funded the overall Biometric Entry-Exit Program with up to $1 billion, which was to come from fees collected for H-1B and L-1 visas by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) though Fiscal Year 2027.

According to program officials, CBP had determined the projected $1 billion in fee collections would enable deployment and maintenance of full biometric air and sea operations through the end of FY 2027, and to fund technical demonstrations at land POEs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that USCIS would collect $115 million a year to support the program.

The problem is, since FY 2016, the fees USCIS has collected have been far below what was originally expected. Only a paltry $362 million has been raised from the time the program was conceived through FY 2023. DHS’s IG said CBP now estimates that total collections will be somewhere between $410 and $450 million by FY 2027, a far cry from the $1 billion it expected, and needs.

Indeed. Based on the current USCIS collection estimates, CBP said in its FY 2025 budget request that it anticipates receiving approximately $448.0 million over the next ten years, 45 percent less than the original $1 billion estimate. CBP said it blames the decline on companies avoiding paying fees by forming subsidiaries that do not meet the criteria required to pay the additional fee; larger companies that previously met the fee criteria having changed policies on hiring of foreign workers; fewer companies that originally anticipated being subjected to the fee; and COVID impacts in FY 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

USCIS has begun a detailed analysis to determine the exact cause of the reduction, but regardless of what it finds, reduced collections are going to severely impact CBP’s ability to expand the program beyond the air environment within ten years. Consequently, it’s unlikely CBP will be able to deploy the Biometric Entry-Exit Program to vehicles arriving at land POE’s anytime soon.

Will Congress step in to directly fund the program? Well, that, too, remains to be seen. DHS isn’t requesting direct appropriations, and there’s been no movement to speak of by anyone on the Hill to do so.

And what does DHS’s IG think. Well, he’s been very clear: Until DHS addresses these problems, it will remain at risk of admitting dangerous individuals into the country who may pose significant threats to national security.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  CBP  |  DHS  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification