DHS to speed traveler identity verification

The Homeland Security Department plans to increase the speed of database searches that verify the identities of travelers entering the U.S. by land to finally enforce a June 2009 document requirement, according to an inspector general audit.

The so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative stipulates that citizens from the United States, Canada, Bermuda and Mexico arriving at U.S. land ports must present passports or other approved documents to enter the country. But DHS' Customs and Border Protection has failed to provide CBP officers with detailed steps they must take to confirm the identities of travelers without papers, and thus is not fully enforcing the rule.

"Until the new travel document requirement is fully enforced, the agency continues to incur risk that persons falsely claiming to be citizens of the United States, Canada and Bermuda may be admitted to the United States," IG officials wrote in a report released Monday.

According to the audit, enforcement typically would require creating an indoor screening area, where a CBP officer can check travelers not carrying papers against various law enforcement databases to confirm identity and citizenship. Fully implementing the rule also would require additional designated parking spaces for travelers to leave their cars while undergoing additional vetting.

But CBP officials said they can probe the databases quickly on premises, avoiding the need for additional facilities.

"CBP continues to focus our limited enforcement resources on increasing query rates within the land border environment, as the law enforcement benefit is clear when compared to the secondary referral of an otherwise legitimate [U.S. citizen] traveler who is uninformed, forgetful or impoverished," James F. Tomsheck, assistant commissioner for the CBP Office of Internal Affairs, wrote in a letter responding to a draft of the IG report.

For ports where current staffing levels, facilities and parking make it nearly impossible to process all travelers without documentation, CBP plans to expedite computer checks by May 2011, states the final report, dated Nov. 29.

The report does not describe how officers will be able to accelerate database queries and DHS was not able to respond to a request for information about how they would do that.

Stephanie Malin, a CBP spokeswoman, said the agency has since deployed new software to all land border ports that combines vehicle and passenger data for the first time and links that information to other family members for quick recognition. In addition, she said officials have implemented next-generation license plate readers and radio frequency identification technology at all major ports of entry on the Southwest border.

The RFID tools, which are deployed in traffic lanes, rapidly display traveler information to officers and instantly trigger law enforcement database searches, allowing documents to be checked as vehicles approach the inspection area.

The new license plate readers have an accuracy rate of 95 percent, a 10 percent improvement over those they replaced, Malin said, which will save officers from manually correcting almost 10 million erroneous license plate queries per year.

During the audit, DHS officials had said that moving to full enforcement was unnecessary, because 96 percent of travelers already have documentation with them at border crossings.

But IG officials concluded: "CBP has not determined whether the ports have sufficient resources, such as CBP officers, computer workstations and parking spaces to accommodate [noncompliant] travelers who may be referred to the secondary inspection areas."

At the time of the report, CBP had not analyzed the impact that the increase in secondary inspection workload would have on staffing and infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Malin said that CBP in February will analyze land border crossings in Detroit and Laredo, Texas, to test the impact of a standard operating procedure under which individuals without the required documents would receive a secondary inspection.