US customs officials began to remove the biometrics of people crossing the US border on foot

The US federal government began to scan the retina and recognize the faces of foreigners leaving the US on foot. This decision is due to the need to fill the gaps in the border security.

The verification system, launched on February 11 at a busy border crossing with Mexico, is aimed at identifying people crossing the border and tightening visa controls, as up to half of foreigners are in the United States with an expired visa, phys.org reports .

Also in December last year, the Border Guard began collecting information about foreigners going to the United States through the Otea Mesa checkpoint connecting Tijuana and San Diego.
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Congress has long demanded the introduction of biometric screening - the collection of fingerprints, images of individuals or retinal scans, but the huge financial and logistical costs did not allow this. In turn, human rights activists are worried that biometric data collected in this way may fall into the hands of third parties.

Authorities will test all of the methods listed to determine which technology is the fastest, most accurate, and less intrusive. The final results are expected this summer, which in the future, based on the data obtained, will allow the implementation of such checks at all checkpoints.

“All we want is to know when a person entered the country and when he left its territory,” commented Michelle Rodriguez, deputy director of the Otey Mesa checkpoint.

A twenty-nine-year-old truck driver from Tijuana named Ramon Rangel rode his bicycle through Otea Mesa. For a start, the border guards scanned his documents, then asked to stand on a special mark and look at the green light that registered the retina of the eyes and facial features. It took several seconds to verify the information received with the documents. “I was surprised at such innovations, but I think this is a good idea,” shared Rangel, who regularly crosses the border, and noted that this procedure did not take much time.


A customs officer helps a man from China scan his documents while the camera scans the retina of the eyes and facial features (February 18, 2016)

Jay Stanley, a senior political analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said data would be synchronized with data from various institutions as soon as it became the norm. Other countries may also begin to use this technology and build their own biometric bases on the basis of American experience.

There are concerns that an additional check will overload the already clogged checkpoints. The customs officers say that the check takes only a few seconds and so far no complaints have been received. Marco Cruz, a fifty-seven-year-old resident of Tijuana, crosses the border two or three times a week. He confirmed that this verification procedure does not slow down the process. “It's good as long as everything is quick and easy,” he said.

The Otei Mesa border point was chosen because it is one of the busiest and the authorities wanted to see how the technology will show itself in such conditions. US border guards use three different approaches. Some aliens will be sent to scan the face and retina. Another will be asked to stop and just look at the camera, and the third group will show the spread of their documents and look at the camera. Americans leaving the United States will move in a separate lane, where border guards will gather information about their biographies, date of birth, etc., but they will not remove biometric data.

While technological innovations will be applied only to foreigners, but the extension of this practice to US citizens is questionable.