The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday published a final rule that would make permanent its Global Entry program that expedites the customs and security process for trusted air travelers arriving at international airports in the United States.
The rule would enable Customs and Border Protection to expand Global Entry beyond the 20 pilot international airports in the United States. DHS said that the program currently reduces average wait times in passport processing lines by more than 70 percent.
Global Entry has more than 260,000 members and is available to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and Mexican nationals. It is also available to Dutch citizens under a reciprocal program that links Global Entry with the Privium trusted traveler program in the Netherlands and to Canadian citizens that are members of the NEXUS trusted traveler program.
Upon arrival at an international airport in the United States where Global Entry operates, members of the program go to a kiosk and insert their passport or lawful permanent resident card into a document reader, provide digital fingerprints for comparison against fingerprints on file, answer customs declaration questions on a touch screen, and then present a transaction receipt to a Customs and Border Protection officer before leaving the inspection area.
Stewart Verdery, a former policy chief at DHS who is now with a homeland security consulting firm The Monument Group, praised the pending expansion of Global Entry as a good idea and a way for CBP to handle increased traffic amid a tighter budget. Writing in the Security Debrief yesterday, Verdery said the program is about to expand to 24 airports and possibly 37 by the end of 2012.