The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hopes to have its plans to Congress within a month for how it will develop a biometric-enabled system to track the departure of foreign nationals leaving through an airport from the United States, a department official told a House panel yesterday.
DHS, at the direction of Secretary Janet Napolitano last summer, and working with its other federal partners, has already begun to integrate and link various national security and law enforcement data repositories with immigration and travel systems that will “result in greater efficiencies to our Visa security program and they will provide the core components of an enhanced entry/exit system,” John Cohen, deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator at DHS, told the House Homeland Security Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee.
The linkage of these databases will enable local law enforcers that are processing persons who have been arrested to identify if they are in violation of their immigration status and, if so, notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so that action can be taken, Cohen said. Some of this is already being done through the Secure Communities program managed by ICE.
Linking the various data repositories, which go beyond just biometric databases, will help DHS determine if someone has left the country, has changed their status, has been charged with a crime or has overstayed their Visa, Cohen said. DHS is already using name matching algorithms to ensure that the departure data being collected at U.S. air and seaports “more accurately match data collected upon a person’s entry into the U.S.,” he said.
The forthcoming plan for a comprehensive biometric exit system will link the existing front end processes, which include the collection of information and biometrics when someone applies for a Visa to travel to the United States and when they enter the country, the “feeding of those biometrics into an informational layer that connects not only that data with other immigration data, but with other law enforcement data and intelligence data,” and the collection of information upon departure, Cohen said.
The ongoing integration efforts are resulting in the vetting of individuals who haven’t been examined this closely before, Cohen said.