GovernmentExecutive.com

A federal tracking system for foreign visitors who exit the country by air is not ready for prime time, despite a looming deadline, the government's watchdog agency said.

The details of an integral component of the Homeland Security Department's foreign visitor and immigrant status tracking system still haven't been hammered out, even though DHS promised to deliver that capability by the end of 2008, according to a March 31 report from the Government Accountability Office. The department hasn't figured out yet how it plans to track foreigners who leave the country on airplanes through its U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, prompting a GAO official to call a 2008 deadline meaningless.

"It's void of information," said Randy Hite, GAO's director for information technology architecture and systems. "DHS claims this capability will be in place by a certain date [end of 2008]. It's just a date thrown out there. There's absolutely no reason to believe that the date is grounded in any type of reality."

US VISIT is Homeland Security's ambitious program that uses biometric and biographic information to control and monitor the pre-entry, entry, status and exit of foreign visitors. The program uses a strategic approach comprised of two parts: the unique identity component, which uses fingerprints, photos and other biometric information to track all individuals who interact with immigration or Border Patrol; and the exit component, which tracks the air departures of all foreign visitors from the United States.

While GAO found the unique identity component to be well-defined, the agency said DHS provided virtually no information on the exit portion.

"There's this ongoing need to make sure that US VISIT is defined, developed and implemented in a way that allows it to work with other related border control programs," Hite said. "You don't develop these programs in isolation, but in context. Those relationships need to be better defined."

Hite said DHS has alluded to a partnership with the airlines in helping to track passengers exiting the country by air. But, he added, until the exact plan is hammered out with the airlines' input, the exit portion is up in the air. "What little information about what the exit solution is going to look like depends a huge part on the airlines, which they haven't agreed to yet."

Hite said DHS has yet to publish its proposed rules on the issue, a first step toward finalizing an agreement with the airlines. "There are many steps that have got to play out; who knows how long it will take?" Hite said. "The proposed rules were supposed to be out a long time ago."

The report also included some positive feedback on the US VISIT program, such as the decision to settle on fingerprints as the crucial piece of biometric data, a decision Hite called "proper."

DHS agreed with GAO's recommendations, and said it was working "aggressively" on publishing proposed rules on an air exit strategy in time to meet the 2008 deadline.

COMMENTS

• Brian, for the record, Customs was doing a pretty good job prior to 9/11 with the resources it had. The fact that street drugs were available had more to do with supply and demand, and the fact that Americans weren't willing to put up with the expense and inconvenience to business and travel to truly fight the "War on Drugs" in any meaningful way. And yes, you're correct that "Customs has no idea on how to fix any Legacy INS problems". Neither could Legacy INS, which is why those problems were transferred along to CBP and ICE as well. Legacy Customs employees neither asked for nor wanted this foolish merger any more than Legacy INS employees did. It was thrust upon all of us, against our wishes and our better judgment, by politicians who had no clue as to what they were doing. Your anger and resentment would more appropriately be directed at those who are truly responsible for this fiasco, instead of those who were caught up in it, through no fault of their own. ICEman Posted April 17, 2008 8:19 PM
• To clarify a little here, US-VISIT is not part of CBP and in fact is not part of ICE either. It is in NPDD, strange as that seems. However, most of the senior management is ex-INS. There is almost nobody currently in US-VIST senior management that came out of CBP. Also, the law currently forbids US citizens to be part of this system. As far as aliens and their status goes, one of the seldom mentioned systems in this program, ADIS, actually does a better job at identity matching and maintaining the status since it integrates both biometric identifier and biographic data from border crossings, entry and exit, along immigration admission updates, to determine the status. Exit is very thorny because there is no law enforcement officer involved in the outprocessing in a secure area near the gate. This is a major difference between exit and entry, and the core of much of the problem. Lee Schoff Posted April 7, 2008 4:24 PM
• Brian 15% is good enough for government work!!! I'm impressed Dan ketter Posted April 7, 2008 11:17 AM