Starting five years ago non-US citizens entering the United States had to submit to a biometric (digital fingerprinting) identification process before being allowed into the country. Now they are going to have to go through the same procedure when leaving the country.

The plan is to allow the U.S. government to determine “faster and more accurately whether non-U.S. citizens have departed the United States on time or remained in the country illegally,” according to Deparatment of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

On May 28 US-VISIT, a department within DHS, began conducting tests at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport to determine how the program can best be conducted, helping DHS “determine and develop standard procedures for use at airports across the country to expedite legitimate travel and enhance our nation’s security,” Napolitano said.

The tests are not being conducted to determine if biometric procedures work, said Anna Hinken, a spokesperson for US-VISIT. She said that it is the procedure that is being tested, not the technology. “We’ve already proven that the technology works.”

And it’s the procedure that has caused a considerable amount of controversy since DHS first proposed it. An NPRM was issued in April 2008 providing a very extensive discussion on the proposal, including different cost scenarios based on which organization performed the procedures, to include Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the airlines or the Transportation Security Administration.

At that point, Air Transport Association and International Air Transport Association stepped in to start lobbying against the airlines being required to collect the biometric information. This, in turn, caused the Congress to step in and mandate DHS to do further testing of the procedures before initiating the program.

“Unlike entering the country where passengers have to go through customs and immigration already, in the United States there is no natural place where you have to show your passport and go through a controlled area other than check-in,” said Steve Lott, with IATA in Washington, D.C.
“The DHS was going to force airline agents, airline employees, to take the finger prints, which brings up a couple of issues. One is that airlines are trying to get people away from the check-in desks by things like checking in on-line or using kiosks, things like that. So this would make lines longer,” he said.

“The second issue is that airline employees or agents are not border guards; they are not trained government agents. They shouldn’t have to do what we see as a government procedure. And a third issue is that they wanted the airlines to pay for it, which would cost billion of dollars to an industry that couldn’t afford it.”

Lott said that a DHS estimate in the NPRM, based on having airline people do the procedure at check-in, with the airlines buying the equipment and sending the data, would cost industry $3-$4 billion. “But we ran our own numbers and think that the government is way off,” he said. “We put the number at about $12 billion to industry. The bulk of that discrepancy is really the data collection and data transmission. We don’t think the government took into account the cost of building a network to transmit all this information. We pointed out that it wouldn’t just be sending text. It would be sending pictures of people’s fingerprints. That’s a bigger file.”

The tests started last week in Atlanta are being performed by TSA, while those in Detroit are being handled by CBP.

“We did attempt to get the airlines to help with this, but could not get any airline to help,” Hinken said. “So we moved forward with the pilot programs. We will evaluate (the results) after 35 days. Based on that evaluation, we hope to start publishing a final rule on whose going to be collecting the information this fall. It could be either CBP or TSA, or it could be another entity. So there has been no determination made.”

Hinken said that the two pilot study programs are budgeted at $5.5 million combined. US-VISIT plans to begin implementing the new biometric exit procedures for non-U.S. citizens within the next year. Information from the biometric fingerprinting will be provided to federal, state and local agencies, it said.

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