The cost of implementing a biometric exit program at the nation’s airports would cost more than $3 billion over 10 years, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told a House panel yesterday.
Those estimates are about three times the expected costs a DHS official provided Congress in 2010 based on the results of pilot projects that explored options for collecting fingerprint data from foreign nationals departing the United States through airports (Defense Daily, March 26, 2010).
Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-Miss.), a member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, said during yesterday’s hearing on plans for a biometric exit program in the United States, that former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano had provided cost estimates between $3 billion and $9 billion for such a program. John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner for the Office of Field Operations at Customs and Border Protection (CBP), answered that he believes that cost range includes adding a biometric exit plan at the nation’s seaport as well.
.jpg) |
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a member of the full committee, said the $3 billion estimate is five years old and cited a footnote in the prepared testimony of DHS officials as saying there are emerging biometric technologies in the market that were not available when the department conducted earlier pilot tests of air exit scenarios. Smith said the most recent estimates he has seen bring the implementation costs down to between $500 million and $600 million.
The various biometric exit cost estimates come at a time when Congress is beginning to push anew for more effective ways to track the departure of foreign nationals from the United States so that immigration and security officials have more clarity around those who are overstaying their visas. The Senate this summer approved an immigration reform bill that calls for implementing a biometric exit system at a number of the nation’s busiest airports while studying deployments for the busiest sea and land ports (Defense Daily, May 22). An amendment to the bill would require an electronic system to verify the entry and exit of foreign nationals entering and exiting the country from all international airports and seaports (Defense Daily, June 21 and June 27).
In the House, separate measures have also been introduced calling for pilot projects and the implementation of biometric exist solutions at airports and seaports within three to five years.
Meantime, DHS is beginning a concerted effort to explore how it could possibly reengineer the entry and exit process for foreign nationals at U.S. airports so that security can be improved while maintaining or bettering passenger throughput rates. Last week an official with the department’s research branch said that the Air Entry-Exit Reengineering (AEER) program, that is being coordinated with CBP, is developing a test bed for exploring various solutions that could be tested at airports in 2015 (Defense Daily, Sept. 20).
CBP’s Wagner said the AEER program will include deliberate testing for where to put any biometric air exit system in the departure process. He said the earlier pilots used handheld systems and kiosks that if deployed operationally wouldn’t stop a person from recording their biometrics as part of the process for departing the country and then leaving the airport without leaving the country.
“We really want to have a process in place that gives us the assurances the person got on board the plane and left the country,” Wagner said.
Wagner said that deploying a biometric exit system at the nation’s land borders would be problematic due in part to infrastructure limitations, higher travel volume than at air and sea ports as well as the fact that the border is crossed by pedestrians and vehicles. He added that in some places vehicles depart the United States at 50 miles per hour and that attempting to quickly and efficiently collect biometrics from the occupants of vehicles would be difficult in most situations.
Currently CBP collects biographic data submitted by foreign travelers when departing the country in some modalities such as airports and seaports. However, the 9/11 Commission recommended that biometric capture be included as part of the exit process.
Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), chairman of the border subcommittee, noted that two of the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States on expired visas and said it is easier for visa holders to overstay their permitted time in the country if biometrics are not collected upon their departure.
Currently the United States and Canada are conducting a program that matches biographic entry data of third party nationals entering and exiting both countries through their shared land border that allows for an entry into one country to be automatically recorded as an exit from the other. Wagner said that matching rate from this effort is over 98 percent.
While Canada has the infrastructure in place at its land borders to collect data from persons entering the country, Mexico for the most part does not, making a similar program along the southwest border difficult without expensive infrastructure enhancements, Wagner said.