GAO: More Tests Planned of U.S. VISIT Exit Procedures

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning further pilot tests

at United States air and seaports of biometric-enabled solutions to verify the

exit of certain foreigners leaving the country, the Government Accountability

Office (GAO) tells Congress.

Previous testing of biometric exit solutions at air and seaports

demonstrated the technical feasibility of doing so although the various tests

required traveler compliance. In the next round of testing, officials for U.S.

VISIT, which is the program charged with developing biometric entry and exit

solutions for most foreigners traveling to and from the U.S., will employ

different operational methods aimed at compelling "greater traveler compliance,"

Richard Stana, director of homeland security and justice issues with GAO, told

the House Homeland Security Committee recently.

The earlier round of tests, which began over three years ago, involved

multiple operational biometric collection and verification alternatives. These

included self-service kiosks with fingerprint and digital photograph capture

devices, attendant operated mobile fingerprint and photograph capture devices,

and an attendant operated mobile device used to match the biometrics captured at

a kiosk and encoded in a receipt.

To better enable traveler compliance in the next round of tests, Stana

says that DHS will do things like "repositioning the kiosks, integrating

biometric exit into airport check-in processes, integrating biometric exit into

existing airline processes, integrating biometric exit into Transportation

Security Administration screening checkpoints, and enhancing the use of

Immigration and Customs Enforcement programs intended for enforcement, such as

screening of targeted flights at selected airports."

DHS has $33.5 million to spend on further air and seaport pilot tests

from the FY '06 budget and is in the process of developing a plan for deploying

a comprehensive exit solution under U.S. VISIT, Stana says. However, he notes,

DHS has no timeframe established to implement an exit solution.

Stana says that the testing programs suffer from inadequate "measurable

outcomes" and fail to "recognize the challenges revealed from the prior exit

efforts."

Regarding deployment of exit solutions at land points of entry in the

U.S., DHS earlier this year said it had dropped a self-imposed deadline of

December 2007 because the technology does not yet exist to affordably, and

reliably accomplish this. GAO had already reported late last year that DHS would

not meet the exit deadline (Defense Daily, Dec. 18, 2006). DHS believes it will

take five to 10 more years before the technology is ready to make this happen.