Customs and Border Protection said it has deployed biometric exit technology to two additional U.S. airports to help verify the departure of foreign nationals from the country on select international flights, bringing to six the number of airports that the agency is evaluating the technology and operating concept.

The additional airports for the Traveler Verification Service are Houston’s William P. Hobby International and McCarran International in Las Vegas. The deployments build on a successful June 2016 pilot of the facial matching technology at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport but since then CBP has moved from doing the facial matching on a tablet computer whereas now it is being done in a cloud environment.

Unidentified traveler submitting a fingerprint at a Customs and Border Protection workstation. Photo: CBP
Unidentified traveler submitting a fingerprint at a Customs and Border Protection workstation. Photo: CBP

For the deployments, facial images are obtained from all departing passengers, including U.S. citizens, at the boarding gate on select flights and then quickly compared to a flight-specific photo gallery based on the flight manifest. The live photo is compared against the document photo in the gallery using automated facial recognition to ensure the person boarding the flight is the true bearer of the document.

The legislative mandates for the biometric tracking of visa overstays apply to foreign nationals in the U.S. If a person is determined to be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, that person is determined to be out of scope for the biometric exit program and their photo is discarded within two weeks.

“With the expansion of this technology we will be looking at different flights, airports, lighting conditions, and internal IT configurations to demonstrate to our stakeholders that this solution is flexible, reliable and easy for travelers to use,” John Wagner, deputy executive assistant commissioner for CBP’s Office of Field Operations, said in a statement on Aug. 8.

CBP plans further roll outs of the facial imaging technology to two additional airports this summer.

This fall the agency expects to have enough data from the ongoing exit evaluations to make a decision on moving out more aggressively with additional deployments. This will depend in part on how receptive its stakeholders are to incorporating the technology into their departure processes.

Since last year the agency has been promoting its vision of using biometrics at various stages of the traveler experience for people traveling by aircraft. Delta Airlines [DAL] is working with CBP to test facial recognition-based eGates at John F. Kennedy International Airport and JetBlue Airways [JBLU] is testing facial recognition technology at Boston Logan International Airport to allow passengers to self-board without scanning a boarding pass.

A CBP spokesperson told Defense Daily on Wednesday that so far the technology demonstration of the exit system continue to go well and that the reactions from travelers have been positive. 

CBP began the pilot evaluation in Atlanta last year after then Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson directed the agency to begin implementing a biometric exit system as called for by the 9/11 Commission and various congressional mandates. Currently there are new border security bills that have been introduced in the House and Senate calling for the biometric exit system to be more aggressively deployed and President Donald Trump earlier this year ordered that the deployments be accelerated.

Portugal-based Vision-Box is integrating the tech demonstrations and the facial matching algorithms are supplied by the U.S.-based division of Japan’s NEC Corp. CBP is using Amazon‘s [AMZN] cloud technology.