Customs and Border Protection (CBP) expects that it will begin rolling out the deployment of a congressionally-mandated biometric exit system as some airports this year to help verify the departure of foreign nationals from the United States, but the agency isn’t likely to the system fully deployed at any one airport, John Wagner, deputy executive assistant commissioner for CBP’s Office of Field Operations, said on Tuesday.
Under the administration of former President Barack Obama, CBP was charged with deploying a biometric exit system at major U.S. airports by the end of 2018. President Donald Trump earlier this year issued an executive order that included a directive accelerating the biometric deployments.
CBP since June 2016 has been pilot testing the facial-recognition system on a single international flight departing daily from Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, demonstrating that the technology doesn’t impact the passenger boarding process of the airline, that travelers are accepting of the facial technology, and that existing traveler photos can be used for matching, according to a slide displayed by Wagner.
Wagner also said that all travelers are having their photo taken even though the mandate is targeted at foreign nationals. When the system confirms that a traveler is a U.S. citizen, it drops their record, he said at a conference hosted by the Global Business Travel Association.
This summer CBP will roll out the facial recognition system to additional airports for testing of the desired solution, which will include utilizing cloud infrastructure for hosting images and doing the biometric matching, and assess the lighting conditions in different airports, how different airlines board their passengers and the impacts on the operating concept, Wagner said. The upcoming tests will also allow CBP to assess its own metrics such as how quickly its gallery of photos is staged and the matching speed, he said.
CBP will also be working with the airlines and the Transportation Security Administration as it rolls out the biometric exit system, Wagner said.
Wagner said there isn’t a firm date yet for deploying the exit solution, saying that the schedule is unlikely to include an entire airport. Instead, it will be on a “case by case basis” depending on the airlines and airports, he said.
Currently foreign nationals arriving to the U.S. have their fingerprints checked against their visa and sometimes other records to ensure the arriving individual is the same person that applied to travel to the U.S. Wagner said CBP’s plan is to convert the arrival process to a facial recognition check with the fingerprint records in the background.
A pilot test using facial recognition for arrivals is expected to occur at a U.S. airport this year, he said.