DHS proposes biometrics expansion for immigrants, dropping age restrictions and requiring biometrics from some US citizens

The Department of Homeland Security is looking to ratchet up its collection of biometrics in the immigration system. 

Under a rule proposed Monday, the department would set up a biometric identity system to track people throughout the immigration lifecycle. The new regulation would expand who DHS can require biometrics from — including U.S. citizens as well as children — and what types of biometrics it can collect.

Specifically, it centers on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which already collects some biometrics — like a face photo or fingerprint — when people apply for certain immigration benefits, like temporary resident status. 

Now, DHS wants to set up a system to require biometrics from any person filing for an immigration benefit, as well as people “associated” with the application, a category DHS says could include U.S. citizens.

The proposed rule eliminates previous age restrictions so that DHS can collect biometric data from children under the age of 14. This expansion would also apply to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, allowing them to collect biometrics from minors. One of the aims of the regulatory filing is to “expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest or encounter,” it says.

DHS is also proposing a broader definition of biometrics. This would also allow ICE and CBP to obtain a variety of identifiers, like images of people’s faces, finger and palm prints, signatures, eye scans, voice and DNA. In particular, DNA could be used to verify a genetic relationship or someone’s sex, the regulatory filing says.

The department previously started similar rulemaking in President Donald Trump’s first administration. Immigration advocates and other civil society groups panned the proposal at the time, saying it could enable a surveillance state “antithetical to basic American values.” The proposed rule garnered over 5,000 comments before the Biden administration withdrew it.

DHS argues in the new regulatory filing that the changes would improve its identity verification efforts and therefore help uncover fraud and promote national security. 

Big picture, the department intends to set up a continuous vetting system, requiring immigrants to repeatedly undergo screening until they become a citizen. 

The proposed rule states that the collected biometrics will be reused and shared across other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, with the intelligence community and others. USCIS already puts the biometric data it collects into the U.S. government’s largest database of biometrics, housed at DHS.

This isn’t the only expansion of data collection underway at USCIS. 

The agency was recently sued over its efforts to consolidate sensitive data from different government agencies into its system used to verify individuals’ immigration status, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements Program, or SAVE.

DHS announced Monday that states can now use that system to verify the citizenship of voters using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

The SAVE system includes records from USCIS’ biometric system, according to a new DHS notice. 

That USCIS biometric system — which presumably will incorporate the expanded collection of biometrics proposed under the new rule — could get a lot more data if the rule is finalized. The department estimates that it would collect 1.12 million more biometric submissions annually, or 3.19 million total, under the proposed scheme. DHS is accepting comments on the proposal through Jan. 2. 

“We're seeing a sort of boundless appetite by DHS and by immigration enforcement for more and more data [and] for more and more biometric data from all kinds of sources,” said Jake Laperruque, the deputy director for the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

“At the same time, there’s this really draconian effort to crack down on enforcement and to use tools like data … for enforcement operations,” he added.

Just last week, ICE and CBP came under fire from privacy experts and Democrats over the use of facial recognition to identify people in the field. 

The mobile phone app those agencies are using is reportedly based on the entry-exit system that DHS expanded just last week, requiring facial recognition from all non-U.S. citizens at the border.