Visa Holders: Social Media and Biometrics Could Stop Visitors Overstaying
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APEX Insight: Twitter handles and Facebook profiles may be how the DHS keeps watch on overstayers. In this section of the multipart feature, we look at whether social media credentials checks and biometric checkpoints could be prominent tools at the disposal of US border enforcement.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates 629,000 people – 1.25 percent of visitors to the US – overstayed their visas in 2016. Among the tactics being explored by the agency to better identify who’s crossing the country’s borders are using biometric checkpoints and collecting social media credentials.
The DHS has displayed interest in visitors’ social media profiles as early as 2010, but has as of late considered taking its getting-to-know-you strategy further. Then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told Congress earlier this year that his agency wanted to require some refugees and visa applicants to divulge their social media passwords. A similar policy was floated – and sunk – during the Obama administration, and its current fate is unknown.
“A single system search can require up to 40 different passwords, which has led to significant delays in information processing.”
However, gathering a visa holder’s Twitter details won’t be much use if that information can’t be retrieved. The DHS Office of Inspector General found the IT systems used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be profoundly fragmented. A single system search can require up to 40 different passwords, which has led to significant delays in information processing. The result: a backlog of more than 1.2 million visa overstay cases, of which 40 percent per year turn out to be false alarms.
Meanwhile, US borders do not capture firsthand data on who is leaving – the DHS relies on third-party information such as airline passenger manifests for that. Scouring a visa holder’s Facebook selfies would only extend this inefficiency.
In his assessment, DHS Inspector General John Roth notes, “ICE must equip its personnel with the tools and training they require for the vital work of tracking visitors who overstay their visas. Timely identification, tracking and adjudication of potential visa overstays is critical to ICE’s public safety and national security mission.”
“Besides working with fragmented systems, the actual collection of biometric data still remains too slow for widespread use.”
To that end, a biometric-comparison pilot project has been deployed at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL), testing the capacity to match fingerprints, facial scans and iris scans of those departing ATL to those who have previously arrived. Besides working with fragmented systems, the actual collection of biometric data still remains too slow for widespread use. The goal of deploying biometric exit scans at 20 airports by 2016 has since been downgraded to at least one airport by 2018.
“Visa Holders” was originally published in the 7.4 September/October issue of APEX Experience magazine.