Congress opens $69.5 billion pipeline for border tech, biometric expansion

Congress has approved nearly $70 billion in new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding through 2029, creating a major new pool of money for border surveillance, immigration enforcement, identity systems, and investigative technology while leaving unclear how much will be spent directly on facial recognition, fingerprinting, iris scans, or other biometric tools.

The Secure America Act, signed into law June 10, appropriates $69.545 billion across Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HIS), and two additional DHS funding accounts.

The law includes a $3.45 billion CBP account for border security, technology, and screening that expressly permits spending on the government’s biometric entry-exit system. But Congress did not assign a separate dollar amount to biometric entry-exit, facial recognition, fingerprints, iris recognition, or any named biometric platform.

Instead, biometric entry-exit is one authorized use within a larger account that also covers nonintrusive inspection equipment and related civil works, AI, machine learning, air and marine platforms, border surveillance technology, drug-interdiction efforts, and CBP mission support and operations.

The $3.45 billion account is therefore the clearest new biometric-related funding stream in the legislation. It may be used for necessary expenses, including technology deployment, related to the biometric entry-exit system required under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

The same account can finance new inspection equipment and associated construction, including AI and machine-learning tools, as well as surveillance technology along the southwest, northern, and maritime borders.

The law also limits how CBP may use the technology money for surveillance towers. Funds may not be used to procure or deploy towers along the southwest or northern borders unless CBP has tested and accepted them to deliver autonomous capabilities.

The statute defines autonomous capabilities as systems designed to use AI, machine learning, computer vision, or other algorithms to accurately detect, identify, classify and track items of interest in real time, and to make operational adjustments without active personnel engagement or continuous human command and control.

The biometric-related account is only one component of the larger package. CBP receives $9.55 billion to hire, pay, train and equip Border Patrol agents and support personnel for functions other than immigration-enforcement and customs functions; $13.02 billion for agents, support staff and operations tied to immigration-enforcement activities; and the $3.45 billion technology and screening account.

ICE receives $31.075 billion for enforcement and removal operations. The account may be used for personnel, transportation, information technology maintenance and sustainment, fee collection improvements, body-worn cameras, facility and fleet operations, legal staff, and expanded agreements with state and local agencies under Section 287(g).

The ICE appropriation also requires that at least $350 million be spent on detainer management, detainer issuance, custodial transfers, release monitoring, transportation, and arrests involving specified “covered unlawful aliens” encountered in jurisdictions that are not qualified cooperating jurisdictions.

That is not biometric funding, but it supports enforcement operations in which mobile identity checks, federal databases, and information sharing systems may play a role.

A separate $7.45 billion appropriation supports HSI personnel, mission support, and operations. The statute specifies that the money is for functions other than HSI’s immigration enforcement and customs enforcement missions.

Still, the HSI account includes a significant identification and forensic component. The law requires that $108.5 million be used to hire, pay, and equip additional child exploitation investigators and forensic analysts at HSI’s Victim Identification Laboratory, the Cyber Crimes Center, and HSI field offices.

The money is intended to support the identification and rescue of child sexual exploitation victims and to train state and local law enforcement personnel in identifying victims.

Congress also appropriated two additional $2.5 billion DHS accounts. The first is available for purposes authorized in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs title; the second is available for purposes authorized in the Judiciary title and specified provisions of the earlier reconciliation law. Neither account includes a biometric earmark.

The result is a funding structure that gives DHS substantial room to decide how money will be allocated among technology, personnel, surveillance, enforcement operations, and support systems.

Congress preserved biometric entry-exit as an authorized use of a multibillion-dollar CBP technology account while also expanding adjacent infrastructure, including AI-enabled inspection tools, surveillance systems, information technology, body-worn cameras, removal operations, local law enforcement partnerships, forensic laboratories, and field personnel.

What remains unknown is how CBP will divide the $3.45 billion technology account. The act includes no separate funding breakout for facial comparison, fingerprint matching, identity databases, cameras, contractor support, software integration, or biometric collection at airports, land crossings, and seaports.

Nor does the statute identify how much of the broader ICE and DHS appropriations may ultimately support mobile identification tools or systems linking state and local officers to federal identity records.

Those details will be fleshed out through DHS allocation decisions, spending plans, procurement notices, and contract awards.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  border security  |  CBP  |  DHS  |  facial recognition  |  ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement