[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
VISA OVERSTAYS: A GAP IN THE NATION'S BORDER SECURITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
BORDER AND
MARITIME SECURITY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 23, 2017
__________
Serial No. 115-17
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Michael T. McCaul, Texas, Chairman
Lamar Smith, Texas Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Peter T. King, New York Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
Mike Rogers, Alabama James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Tom Marino, Pennsylvania William R. Keating, Massachusetts
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Filemon Vela, Texas
John Katko, New York Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey
Will Hurd, Texas Kathleen M. Rice, New York
Martha McSally, Arizona J. Luis Correa, California
John Ratcliffe, Texas Val Butler Demings, Florida
Daniel M. Donovan, Jr., New York Nanette Diaz Barragan, California
Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin
Clay Higgins, Louisiana
John H. Rutherford, Florida
Thomas A. Garrett, Jr., Virginia
Brian K. Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania
Brendan P. Shields, Staff Director
Kathleen Crooks Flynn, Deputy General Counsel
Michael S. Twinchek, Chief Clerk
Hope Goins, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER AND MARITIME SECURITY
Martha McSally, Arizona, Chairwoman
Lamar Smith, Texas Filemon Vela, Texas
Mike Rogers, Alabama Cedric L. Richmond, Louisiana
Jeff Duncan, South Carolina J. Luis Correa, California
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Val Butler Demings, Florida
Will Hurd, Texas Nanette Diaz Barragan, California
John H. Rutherford, Florida Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Michael T. McCaul, Texas (ex (ex officio)
officio)
Paul L. Anstine, Subcommittee Staff Director
Alison Northrop, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director/Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Statements
The Honorable Martha McSally, a Representative in Congress From
the State of Arizona, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Border
and Maritime Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Filemon Vela, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Border and
Maritime Security.............................................. 4
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 5
Witnesses
Mr. Michael Dougherty, Assistant Secretary, Border, Immigration,
and Trade, Office of Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 7
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 8
Mr. John Wagner, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 17
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 8
Mr. Clark Settles, Assistant Director, National Security
Division, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 19
Joint Prepared Statement....................................... 8
Mr. John Roth, Inspector General, Office of the Inspector
General, U.S. Department of Homeland Security:
Oral Statement................................................. 21
Prepared Statement............................................. 22
VISA OVERSTAYS: A GAP IN THE NATION'S BORDER SECURITY
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Tuesday, May 23, 2017
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in
room HVC-210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Martha McSally
[Chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives McSally, Rogers, Duncan, Barletta,
Rutherford, Vela, Richmond, Correa, Demings, and Barragan.
Ms. McSally. The Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security will come to
order. The subcommittee is meeting today to examine visa
overstays and their impact on National security. Conversations
about the best way to secure the southern land border have been
the principal focus of the media, Congress, and the
administration for the last months.
Today I want to transition to an equally important but
often overlooked aspect of our border and National security,
visa overstays. Yesterday DHS released the official fiscal year
2016 overstay numbers, and this year they expanded the number
of visa overstay categories to include students and other non-
immigrant visa holders.
I want to commend DHS for producing a more accurate picture
of the challenge, but the numbers are stark. CBP calculated
that we had nearly 740,000 people overstay their visas at some
point in fiscal year 2016. Even using CBP's more generous
numbers that account for some of those overstays who eventually
leave, albeit late, we had almost 630,000 overstays still in
the country at the end of last fiscal year.
Over more time, as more and more overstays left, the number
gets smaller and by January of this year, we still had 544,000
overstays from fiscal year 2016 suspected of being in the
country, still an incredibly large number. To put that number
in context, we only apprehended 310,000 unique individuals
crossing the land border illegally last year, meaning we had
almost twice as many overstays as people apprehended at the
land Southern Border.
It is probably time to jettison the conventional wisdom
that visa overstays make up about 40 percent of the illicit
flow. With this year's number of border apprehensions at a
record low, visa overstays are a much, much bigger problem than
it has been historically.
So why does closing this gap in our border security
defenses matter? Well, there are unidentified National security
and public safety risks in a population that large, and visa
overstays have historically been the primary means for
terrorist entry into the United States. Time and time again,
terrorists have exploited the visa system by legally entering
America.
The 9/11 Commission put it this way, ``for terrorists,
travel documents are as important as weapons.'' The
Commission's focus on travel documents was not surprising.
Since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, terrorists have
abused the hospitality of the American people to conduct
attacks here at home.
Mahmud Abouhalima, an Egyptian convicted of the 1993 World
Trade Center bombing, worked illegally in the United States as
a cab driver after his tourist visa expired. At least four of
the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visas or were out of
status, a missed opportunity to disrupt the attacks that killed
nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans.
Among the most important weaknesses the attackers exploited
was the porous ``outer ring of our border security.'' The
hijackers passed through U.S. border security a combined total
of 68 times without arousing any suspicion.
More recently, Amine El-Khalifi, attempted to conduct a
suicide attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2012. He had been in the
country since 1999 on a tourist visa but never left.
That is why I wanted to hold this hearing today. I do not
want the threat posed by visa overstays to get drowned out by
the challenges we face on the southern land border. We can chew
gum and walk at the same time.
We have to keep the DHS focused on both problem sets,
illicit traffic flow that crosses the land border and the
growing problem of visa overstays. In order to tackle this
challenge, the Department has to first identify those who
overstay their visa in the first place.
A mandate to electronically track entries and exits from
the country has been in place for more than 20 years. A mandate
for a biometrically-based entry-exit system has been a
requirement for 12 years.
CBP has made, in fits and starts, only marginal progress
when it comes to the biometric exit. There have been a series
of exit pilot projects at the Nation's air, land, and sea ports
over the last 10 years, but no plan to ever implement a
biometric exit capability was seriously considered by CBP and
the Department.
Recent Executive Orders make it clear that, finally,
finishing the exit system is a priority for this
administration. Building on previous testing and pilots, CBP
will engage in a series of operational demonstrations with a
planned roll-out of a facial recognition exit system at some of
the Nation's largest airports.
The previous administration committed to a 2018 roll-out of
a fully operational biometric exit system at the Nation's
highest-volume airports. I look forward to hearing about the
plans for exit beyond the operational demonstrations.
Putting a biometric exit system into place, is as the 9/11
Commission noted, ``an essential investment in our National
security.'' Because without a viable biometric exit system,
visa holders can overstay their visa and disappear in the
United States, just as four of the 9/11 hijackers were able to
do.
In the current high-risk threat environment, it is
imperative that we place greater emphasis on the visa process
as a counter-terrorism tool. Once we identify overstays,
especially those who present National security and public
safety threats, we must dedicate the resources necessary to
promptly remove those in the country here illegally. Otherwise,
we put our citizens at risk unnecessarily.
The recent report by DHS's Office of Inspector General
casts significant doubt on ICE's ability to do just that.
Multiple I.T. systems, stovepipes, and lack of training have
appeared to hamper the work of our agents.
According to the OIG, we have a backlog of 1.2 million visa
overstay cases, and we have wasted manpower chasing leads that
have either already left the country or have changed their
immigration status.
In one instance, an ICE agent spent 50 hours tracking down
a lead that turned out to not be an overstay after all. We are
closing cases, thinking a public safety threat has left, when
in reality they are still here. We have to do better.
Adding a reliable exit system will be an immediate force
multiplier that allows National security professionals to focus
their efforts on preventing terrorist attacks and only spending
time tracking down people who are still in the country.
[The statement of Chairman McSally follows:]
Statement of Chairwoman Martha McSally
May 23, 2017
Conversations about the best way to secure the Southern land border
have been the principal focus of the media, Congress, and the
administration for the last few months. Today, I want to transition to
an equally important, but often overlooked, aspect of our border and
National security: Visa overstays.
Yesterday, DHS released the official fiscal year 2016 overstay
numbers and this year they expanded the number of visa overstay
categories to include students and other non-immigrant visa holders. I
want to commend DHS for producing a more accurate picture of the
challenge, but the numbers are stark.
CBP calculated that we had nearly 740,000 people overstay their
visa at some point in fiscal year 2016. Even using CBP's more generous
numbers that account for some of those overstays who eventually leave,
albeit late, we had almost 630,000 overstays still in the country at
the end of the last fiscal year.
Over time, as more and more overstays leave that number gets
smaller, and by January of this year we still had 544,000 overstays
from fiscal year 2016 suspected of being in the country--still an
incredibly large number.
To put that number into context we only apprehended 310,000 unique
individuals crossing the land border illegally last year. Meaning we
had almost twice as many overstays as people apprehended at the land
border.
It's probably time to jettison the conventional wisdom that visa
overstays make up about 40% of the illicit flow. With this year's
number of apprehensions at record lows, visa overstays are a much, much
bigger problem than it has been historically.
So, why does closing this gap in our border security defenses
matter?
There are unidentified National security and public safety risks in
a population that large, and visa overstays have historically been the
primary means for terrorist entry into the United States.
Time and time again, terrorists have exploited the visa system by
legally entering America. The 9/11 Commission put it this way: ``For
terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons.'' The
Commission's focus on travel documents was not surprising. Since the
1993 World Trade Center bombing, terrorists have abused the hospitality
of the American people to conduct attacks here at home.
Mahmud Abouhalima, an Egyptian convicted of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, worked illegally in the United States as a cab driver
after his tourist visa had expired.
At least four of the 9/11 hijackers overstayed their visas, or were
out of status--a missed opportunity to disrupt the attacks that killed
nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans.
And among the most important weaknesses the attackers exploited was
the porous ``outer ring of border security.'' The hijackers passed
through U.S. border security a combined total of 68 times without
arousing suspicion.
More recently, Amine el-Khalifi attempted to conduct a suicide
attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2012. He had been in the country since
1999 on a tourist visa, but never left.
That is why I wanted to hold this hearing today.
I do not want the threat posed by visa overstays to get drowned out
by the challenges we face on the Southern land border.
We can chew gum and walk at the same time.
We have to keep the DHS focused on both problem sets--illicit
traffic that crosses the land border and the growing problem of visa
overstays.
In order to tackle this challenge, the Department has to first
identify those who overstay their visa in the first place.
A mandate to electronically track entries and exits from the
country has been in place for more than 20 years, and a mandate for a
biometrically-based entry-exit system has been a requirement for 12
years.
CBP has made, in fits and starts, only marginal progress when it
comes to biometric exit. There have been a series of exit pilot
projects at the Nation's air, land, and sea ports over the last 10
years, but no plan to ever implement a biometric exit capability was
seriously considered by CBP and the Department.
Recent Executive Orders make it clear that finally finishing the
exit system is a priority for this administration.
Building on previous testing and pilots, CBP will engage in a
series of operational demonstrations with a planned roll-out of a
facial recognition exit system at some of the Nation's largest
airports. The previous administration committed to a 2018 roll-out of a
fully operational biometric exit system at the Nation's highest volume
airports--I look forward to hearing about the plans for exit beyond the
operational demonstrations.
Putting a biometric exit system in place is, as the 9/11 Commission
noted, ``an essential investment in our National security,'' because
without a viable biometric exit system, visa holders can overstay their
visa, and disappear into the United States; just as four of the 9/11
hijackers were able to do.
In the current high-risk threat environment, it is imperative that
we place greater emphasis on the visa process as a counterterrorism
tool.
And once we identify overstays, especially those who present
National security and public safety threats, we must dedicate the
resources necessary to promptly remove those in the country illegally--
otherwise we put our citizens at risk unnecessarily.
The recent report by DHS's Office of Inspector General cast
significant doubt on ICE's ability to do just that. Multiple IT
systems, stovepipes, and lack of training have appeared to hamper the
work of our agents.
According to the IG, we have a backlog of 1.2 million visa overstay
cases and we have wasted manpower chasing leads that have either
already left the country, or have changed their immigration status.
In one instance an ICE agent spent 50 hours tracking down a lead
that turned out not to be an overstay, or we are closing cases thinking
that a public safety threat has left, but in reality they are still
here.
We have to do better.
Adding a reliable exit system will be an immediate force multiplier
that allows National security professionals to focus their efforts on
preventing terrorist attacks, and only spending time tracking down
people who are still in the country.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member of
the subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Vela, for a
statement he may have.
Mr. Vela. I thank Chairwoman McSally for holding today's
hearing on the border security risks posed by visa overstays.
While the White House focuses its border security rhetoric on
building a wall along the Southern Border, attention and
resources should be paid to issues like overstays.
I represent border communities that know first-hand the
security challenges we face along the border, but to keep our
focus mainly on walls is a vulnerability in and of itself. The
approximately 740,000 individuals who overstayed in fiscal 2016
is a far greater number than the 331,000 individuals who were
apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border that year. I believe
these figures illustrate the challenge overstays pose.
Over the last few years, DHS renewed its efforts toward a
biometric entry-exit system. I look forward to hearing from our
panel today about its progress and development and plans for
the eventual deployment of that system. I hope to hear about
how the Department plans to address biometric exit at our land
borders, particularly along the Mexican border.
Unlike Canada, Mexico currently does not have the entry
infrastructure, technology, and processes necessary to share
traveler information with the United States. I hope to hear
from ICE about how it prioritizes individuals who have
overstayed and may pose a National security or public safety
threat.
With limited resources, we must first address those who may
do us harm. Deploying biometric exit at ports of entry and
addressing overstays is no easy task, but it is a necessary
part of ensuring meaningful border security.
I thank the witnesses for joining us today and yield back
the balance of my time.
Ms. McSally. The gentleman yields back. Other Members of
the committee are reminded that opening statements may be
submitted for the record.
[The statement of Ranking Member Thompson follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson
May 23, 2017
This committee has long conducted oversight of DHS's activities
aimed at addressing overstays and deploying a biometric entry-exit
system to identify those who do not depart this country at the
appropriate time.
Deploying such a system was a key recommendation of the 9/11
Commission and has been mandated repeatedly on a bi-partisan basis by
Congress.
The previous administration's commitment to deploying a biometric
exit system at our Nation's busiest airports starting in 2018, coupled
with Congress authorizing up to $1 billion over the next decade to pay
for such a system, was an essential step towards this goal.
I look forward to hearing from our Customs and Border Protection
and DHS Office of Policy witnesses today about their progress toward
deploying biometric exit and whether they remain committed to the 2018
time line. As part of the effort to address overstays, the Department
released its first Entry/Exit Overstay Report in January 2016.
The 2016 report concluded that over 527,000 individuals, or
approximately 1 percent visitors entering the United States by air,
overstayed in fiscal year 2015.
While only a small fraction of these visitors pose a security or
safety concern, it is worth noting this overstay figure far exceeds the
approximately 331,000 individuals apprehended entering the United
States along the Southern Border over the same time period.
President Trump is so busy trying to build his ``big, beautiful
wall'' in a misguided attempt to curb illegal immigration, I am
concerned his administration will lose focus on dealing with those who
come into the United States on a visa, through the proverbial front
door, and remain in this country.
This committee is very interested in the fiscal year 2016 overstay
report, released just yesterday, and what lessons can be learned about
how to address overstays who may pose a security concern.
Though the scope of this most recent report was broader in that it
included several more nonimmigrant visas categories, it would appear
that the result is not significantly different from last year's
analysis.
Of the 50.4 million air and sea nonimmigrant visitors who were
expected to depart in fiscal year 2016, 739,478 individuals were
suspected to have overstayed, which amounts to a 1.47 percent overstay
rate.
I hope to hear more about a recent DHS Office of Inspector General
report that concluded DHS IT systems do not effectively support ICE
visa tracking operations, requiring ICE personnel responsible for
investigating overstays to manually piece together information from
over a dozen systems and databases throughout the Department.
Identifying and responding to overstays who may pose a security
concern is a difficult enough task without technology being an
impediment.
Moreover, the OIG argues that the information used by DHS to
produce its annual report to Congress may underestimate the total
number and rate of visa overstays in the country.
I want to thank the Inspector General for participating in today's
hearing to speak to this technology concern, which is pervasive across
the Department, and to share recommendations on how DHS can improve its
overstay estimates.
I also hope to hear from our Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) witness about their on-going efforts, using existing systems, to
identify and address overstays who pose a National security or public
safety concern.
The Department, with support from Congress, has taken unprecedented
measures in recent years to secure the borders between the ports of
entry.
Rather than spend billions on a border wall boondoggle, DHS must
redouble its efforts to address those who enter America legally and
overstay, particularly when they pose a security concern.
Ms. McSally. We are pleased to be joined today by four
distinguished witnesses to discuss this important topic.
Mr. Michael Dougherty is the assistant secretary for Border
Immigration and Trade Policy at the Department of Homeland
Security. Mr. Dougherty previously served in DHS as a
Citizenship and Immigration Service ombudsman and a senior
policy advisor for immigration with the Border and
Transportation Security Directorate.
Mr. Dougherty's Federal experience also includes service as
legislative counsel on the personal staff of Senator Jon Kyl
and on the staff of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology,
and Homeland Security within the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. John Wagner is the deputy executive assistant
commissioner for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office
of Field Operations. Mr. Wagner formerly served as executive
director of Admissibility and Passenger Programs with
responsibility for all traveler admissibility-related policies
and programs, including the Trusted Traveler Program, the
Electronic System for Travel Authorization, the Immigration
Advisory Program and the Fraudulent Document Analysis Unit.
Mr. Clark Settles is the assistant director for the
National Security Investigations Division within the Homeland
Security Investigations. In this capacity, he is responsible
for strategic planning, National policy implementation, and the
development and execution of operational initiatives.
Additionally, Mr. Settles oversees HSI's National security
programs, which include joint terrorism task forces and the
visa security program.
Mr. John Roth became the inspector general for the
Department of Homeland Security in March 2014. Mr. Roth's long
record of public service includes time at the Food and Drug
Administration, where he served as director of the Office of
Criminal Investigations and the Department of Justice, where,
among many positions, he served as section chief for the
Criminal Division's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug section.
The witnesses' full written statements will appear in the
record.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Dougherty for 5 minutes to
testify.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL DOUGHERTY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BORDER,
IMMIGRATION, AND TRADE, OFFICE OF POLICY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Dougherty. Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and
distinguished Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear today to discuss work in progress at the
Department of Homeland Security, to identify, report, and
address overstays.
Some 50 million non-immigrant visitors enter the United
States each year. They enter for business, to study, to see
family or loved ones or to vacation here. The United States
welcomes these visitors while recognizing that it is imperative
that they depart the country when their visas or period of
authorized admission expires.
Our ability to identify foreign nationals who overstay
their visit is important for numerous reasons. Chief among
them, we need to determine whether individuals pose a threat to
National security or to public safety. We need to protect the
integrity of our immigration system by removing those who are
present in violation of law.
The key way to ensure that the Federal Government has the
means of accurately determining the presence of unlawful
overstays in the United States is through a biometric exit
system that will provide a high level of assurance when a
visitor has left the country.
As most of us know, biometric exit has been a Federal
objective for many years. It is a priority for this
administration. In his Executive Order on March 6, the
President directed DHS to expedite the completion and
implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for
in-scope travelers to the United States, as recommended by the
9/11 Commission.
Yesterday, the Department released the fiscal year 2016
entry-exit overstay report. It contains new data that was
unavailable last year when the fiscal year 2015 report was
issued. The fiscal year 2016 report has been expanded to
include foreign students, exchange visitors, and numerous other
classes of non-immigrants.
DHS's ability to provide new analysis on these non-
immigrant classes results from improvements made by DHS in
expanding its data collection capabilities. The fiscal year
2016 report reflects that 98.53 percent of in-scope, non-
immigrant visitors departed the United States on time and
abided by the terms of their admission.
While that is an impressive level of compliance, our data
indicates that 1.47 percent of non-immigrant visitors
overstayed their period of admission. That means a total of
739,478 individuals who were expected to depart the United
States in fiscal year 2016 did not do so.
While the number of overstays declined through the end of
the 2016 calendar year, these overstay numbers are a
significant concern for Secretary Kelly and for the Department,
as is reflected in the work performed by our inspector general.
DHS has collaborated with the State Department, with DOJ
and with ODNI to improve screening and vetting standards and
procedures so that we can better determine when non-immigrants
intend to fraudulently overstay the terms of their visas, which
is a task assigned to us by the President's Executive Order of
March 6. Secretary Kelly is also committed to increasing the
number of ICE agents to undertake enforcement efforts against
immigration law violators.
We have a clear commitment and direction from the President
via the Executive Order to prioritize biometric entry-exit. DHS
also acknowledges and appreciates the strong support that it
has continuously received from Congress in favor of
implementing such a system.
Building on recent CBP biometric exit pilot programs, on-
going work includes an aggressive effort to reengineer and to
redesign data handling, to develop next generation facial
matching capabilities, and to build a back-end communication
portal to connect with the travel industry and with our
security partners.
Ultimately, the goal of our collaborative efforts with
Government, industry, and international stakeholders is to
accurately identify passengers and to deliver a seamless and
secure travel experience. While implementation of a robust and
effective biometric exit solution will take time, and presents
significant operational challenges, DHS is aggressively
advancing the development of a comprehensive biometric exit
system.
Our strategy is to expand activities under way in the air
and sea environment to include our land borders as well. DHS
will continue to build on the progress made in the fiscal year
2016 overstay report to identify, report, and take appropriate
action against those who overstay or violate the terms of their
admission to the United States.
Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and distinguished
Members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to
testify today on this important issue, and I look forward to
answering your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Dougherty, Mr. Wagner,
and Mr. Settles follows:]
Joint Prepared Statement of Michael Dougherty, John Wagner, Clark E.
Settles
May 23, 2017
introduction
Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and distinguished Members
of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today to
discuss the progress the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is
making to incorporate biometrics into our comprehensive entry/exit
system and to identify, report, and address overstays in support of our
border security and immigration enforcement missions.
Presently, DHS, in conjunction with the Department of State,
collects biometrics for most nonimmigrant foreign nationals \1\ and
checks them against criminal and terrorist watch lists prior to the
issuance of a visa or lawful entry to the United States. Furthermore,
the Department has developed new capabilities and enhanced existing
systems, such as the Automated Targeting System (ATS), to help identify
possible terrorists and others who seek to travel to the United States
to do harm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The following categories of aliens currently are expressly
exempt from biometric requirements by DHS regulations: Aliens admitted
on an A-1, A-2, C-3 (except for attendants, servants, or personal
employees of accredited officials), G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, NATO-1, NATO-2,
NATO-3, NATO-4, NATO-5, or NATO-6 visa; children under the age of 14;
persons over the age of 79; Taiwan officials admitted on an E-1 visa
and members of their immediate families admitted on E-1 visas. 8 CFR
235.1(f)(1)(iv)(A)-(B); and certain Canadian citizens seeking admission
as B nonimmigrants per 8 CFR 235.1(f)(1)(ii). In addition, the
Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security may jointly
exempt classes of aliens from biometric collection requirements and the
Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, as well as the director of
the Central Intelligence Agency, may exempt individuals from biometric
collection requirements. 8 CFR 235.1(f)(1)(iv)(C)-(D).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, DHS manages an entry/exit system in the air and sea
environments that incorporates both biometric and biographic
components. Applying a risk-based approach, the Department is now able,
on a daily basis, to identify and target for enforcement action those
individuals who represent a public safety and/or National security
threat among visitors who have overstayed the validity period of their
admission. Moreover, with the recent support of Congress in the
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Pub. L. No. 114-113), and as
described in the Comprehensive Biometric Entry/Exit Plan provided to
Congress in April 2016--combined with the clear commitment and
direction of the President in section 8 of Executive Order 13780,
Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United
States--CBP is making significant progress toward implementation of a
biometric exit system. The Department has also released the fiscal year
2016 Entry/Exit Overstay Report, which contains significant additional
data not available in the fiscal year 2015 version, which itself was
the first report issued in over 20 years.
existing dhs entry and exit data collection
A biographic-based entry/exit system is one that matches the
personally identifying information on an individual's passport or other
travel documents presented when he or she arrives to and departs from
the United States. The biographic data contained in the traveler's
passport includes name, date of birth, document information, and
country of citizenship. By comparison, a biometric entry/exit system
matches a biometric attribute unique to an individual (e.g.,
fingerprints, a facial image, or iris image).
How DHS Collects Arrival Information
For instances in which an individual requires a visa to enter the
United States, biometric and biographic information captured at the
time his or her visa application is filed with the Department of State
(DOS), along with supporting information developed during an interview
with a consular officer. Additionally, for certain visa categories, the
individual will have already provided biographic information via a
petition filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
For individuals seeking to travel to the United States under the Visa
Waiver Program (VWP), biographic information is captured from an
intending traveler when they apply for an Electronic System for Travel
Authorization (ESTA).\2\ If the individual is authorized for travel
with an ESTA following the required security checks, the individual is
able to travel to the United States under the VWP. Biometric
information is captured at the U.S. port of entry (POE) for VWP
travelers, where the traveler will also be interviewed by a CBP
officer.
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\2\ ESTA collects biographic data and screens passengers against
various law enforcement and intelligence databases. ESTA has digitized
the Form I-94 (Arrival/Departure Record) for authorized travelers from
participating VWP countries.
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In the air and sea environment, DHS receives passenger manifests
submitted by commercial and private aircraft operators and commercial
sea carriers, which include every individual who actually boarded the
plane or ship bound for the United States. This information is
collected in DHS's Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and all
non-U.S. citizen data is then sent to the Arrival and Departure
Information System (ADIS), where it is stored for matching against
departure records.
For individuals who apply for a visa at posts supported by ICE's
Visa Security Program (VSP), biographic information is captured prior
to DOS review to facilitate the screening and vetting of 100 percent of
nonimmigrant visa applicants at those posts prior to DOS Consular
Affairs visa adjudication. As part of VSP operations, additional
information may be developed by the investigative efforts of
internationally deployed ICE Special Agents conducting interviews and
working with domestic based intelligence analysts.
When a nonimmigrant arrives at a U.S. POE and applies for admission
to the United States, a CBP officer interviews the traveler regarding
the purpose and intent of travel, reviews his or her documentation, and
runs law enforcement checks. If applicable,\3\ CBP collects and matches
biometrics against previously collected data and stores this data
within the Office of Biometric Identity Management's (OBIM) Automated
Biometric Information System (IDENT). If admission is granted, the CBP
officer will stamp the traveler's passport with a date indicating the
traveler's authorized period of admission. Based on electronic
information already in DHS's systems, CBP electronically generates a
Form I-94, Arrival/Departure Record that the traveler can print
remotely to provide evidence of legal entry or status in the United
States. The form also indicates how long the individual is authorized
to stay in the United States.
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\3\ Supra note 1.
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How DHS Collects Departure Information
The United States has a fully functioning biographic exit system in
the air and sea environments. Similar to the entry process, DHS also
collects APIS passenger manifests submitted by commercial and private
aircraft operators and commercial sea carriers departing the United
States. Carriers and operators are required by regulations promulgated
under the Trade Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-210) to report biographic
and travel document information to DHS for those individuals who are
physically present on the aircraft or sea vessel at the time of
departure from the United States and not simply for those who have made
a reservation or are scheduled to be on board. Since 2005, collection
of this information has been mandatory, and compliance by carriers is
nearly 100 percent. DHS monitors APIS transmissions to ensure
compliance and, if needed, issues fines for noncompliance. CBP
transfers this data (excluding data for U.S. citizens) to ADIS, which
matches arrival and departure records to and from the United States.\4\
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\4\ DHS uses this information for a variety of immigration and law
enforcement reasons, including to determine which travelers have
potentially stayed past their authorized period of admission (i.e.,
overstayed) in the United States.
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addressing overstays
This integrated approach to collecting entry and exit data supports
the Nation's ability to identify and address overstays. CBP identifies
two types of overstays--those individuals who appear to have remained
in the United States beyond their period of admission (Suspected In-
Country Overstay), and those individuals whose departure was recorded
after their lawful admission period expired (Out-of-Country Overstay).
The overstay identification process is conducted by consolidating
arrival, departure, and change or adjustment to immigration status
information to generate a complete picture of individuals traveling to
the United States. This process extends beyond our physical borders to
include a number of steps that may occur well before an individual
enters the United States through a land, air, or sea POE and up to the
point at which that same individual departs the United States.
CBP's ADIS identifies and transmits potential overstays to CBP's
ATS on a daily basis, which screens them against derogatory
information, prioritizes them, and sends them to ICE's lead management
system, LeadTrac,\5\ which retains them for review and vetting by
analysts.
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\5\ LeadTrac is an ICE system designed to receive overstay leads to
compare against other DHS systems and Classified datasets to uncover
potential National security or public safety concerns for referral to
ICE field offices for investigation. The system employs a case
management tracking mechanism to assist with analysis, quality control
reviews, lead status, and field tracking.
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Through specific intelligence and the use of sophisticated data
systems, ICE identifies and tracks available information on millions of
international students, tourists, and other individuals admitted as
nonimmigrants who are present in the United States at any given time.
Visa overstays and other forms of nonimmigrant status violations bring
together two critical areas of ICE's mission--National security and
immigration enforcement.
Enhancing Capabilities
In the past few years, DHS has made substantial improvements to
enhance our ability to identify, prioritize, and address confirmed
overstays. DHS system enhancements that have strengthened our
immigration enforcement efforts include:
Improved ADIS and ATS-Passenger (ATS-P) data flow and
processing quality and efficiency, increasing protection of
privacy through secure electronic data transfer.
Extended leverage of existing ATS-P matching algorithms,
improving the accuracy of the overstay list. Additional ADIS
matching improvements are underway to further improve match
confidence.
Developed an operational dashboard for ICE agents that
automatically updates and prioritizes overstay ``Hot
Lists,''\6\ increasing the efficiency of data flow between OBIM
\7\ and ICE.
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\6\ ``Hot lists'' are lists of individuals that are prioritized
based on their level of risk.
\7\ OBIM supports DHS components by providing biometric storage and
matching services using its IDENT system to identify known or suspected
terrorists, National security threats, criminals, and those who have
previously violated U.S. immigration laws.
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Implemented an ADIS-to-IDENT interface reducing the number
of records on the overstay list by providing additional and
better quality data to ADIS, and closing information gaps
between the two systems.
Improved ability of ADIS to match USCIS Computer Linked
Adjudication Information Management System (CLAIMS 3) data for
aliens who have extended or changed their status lawfully, and
therefore have not overstayed even though their initial period
of authorized admission has expired.
Created a Unified Overstay Case Management process
establishing a data exchange interface between ADIS, ATS-P, and
ICE's LeadTrac system, establishing one analyst platform for
DHS.
Enhanced ADIS and Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP) data exchange to
increase identification, efficiency, and prioritization of TSA
AFSP overstays within the ADIS overstay population.
Enhanced Overstay ``Hot List,'' consolidating immigration
data from multiple systems to enable ICE employees to more
quickly and easily identify current and relevant information
related to the overstay subject.
Established User-Defined Rules enabling ICE agents to create
new or update existing rule sets within ATS-P as threats
evolve, so that overstays are prioritized for review and action
based on the most up-to-date threat criteria.
Enhanced the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System
and ADIS interface, in order to automatically calculate the
last date of F, M, or J status and more accurately capture a
nonimmigrant's immigration status. This improved data will
reduce fraud and increase awareness by providing Government
officials actionable intelligence with which to make decisions
and initiate investigations.
These measures and system enhancements have proven to be valuable
in identifying and addressing overstays. The DHS steps described above
have strengthened data requirements through computer enhancements,
identified National security overstays through increased collaboration
with the intelligence community, and automated manual efforts through
additional data exchange interfaces. DHS is continuing this progress in
fiscal year 2017.
Reporting Overstay Data
On January 19, 2016, DHS released the first Entry/Exit Overstay
Report. This report represents a culmination of the aforementioned
efforts to enhance data collection and address issues precluding
production of the report in prior years. The Entry/Exit Overstay Report
for Fiscal Year 2015 provided data on departures and overstays, by
country, for foreign visitors to the United States who were lawfully
admitted for business (i.e., B-1 and WB classifications) or pleasure
(i.e., B-2 and WT classifications) through air or sea POEs, and who
were expected to depart in fiscal year 2015--a population which
represents the vast majority of annual nonimmigrant admissions.
Recently, the Department released the Fiscal Year 2016 Entry/Exit
Overstay Report. In partnership with other DHS components, CBP is
continuing to improve data provided by ADIS allowing for the fiscal
year 2016 report to include a significantly expanded classes of
admission, compared with the fiscal year 2015 report.
While the focus of last year's report was on individuals visiting
the United States for business or pleasure, and those traveling under
the VWP, this year's report expands the report population to include
foreign student and exchange visitors (F, M, and J admission classes)
and other in-scope nonimmigrant admission classes (such as H, O, P, Q
admission classes). With the expansion of the report population, the
fiscal year 2016 report accounts for 96.02 percent of all air and sea
nonimmigrant admissions to the United States in fiscal year 2016. This
represents all in-scope classes of admission (i.e. classes of admission
that can produce enforceable overstays), and is expected to be used as
the baseline population for reporting annually going forward. However,
it does not include vehicular or pedestrian admissions at land ports of
entry.
In fiscal year 2016 there were 50,437,278 in-scope nonimmigrant
admissions to the United States through air or sea POEs who were
expected to depart in fiscal year 2016, which represents the majority
of annual nonimmigrant admissions. Of this number, DHS calculated a
total overstay rate of 1.47 percent, or 739,478 individuals. In other
words, 98.53 percent of the in-scope nonimmigrant visitors departed the
United States on time and abided by the terms of their admission.
This report breaks down the overstay rates further to provide a
better picture of those overstays who remain in the United States
beyond their period of admission and for whom there is no identifiable
evidence of a departure, an extension of period of admission, or
transition to another immigration status. At the end of fiscal year
2016, there were 628,799 Suspected In-Country Overstays. The overall
Suspected In-Country Overstay rate for this scope of travelers is 1.25
percent of the expected departures.
Due to continuing departures and changes in nonimmigrant status or
adjustment of status to lawful permanent residence by individuals in
this population, by January 10, 2017, the number of Suspected In-
Country Overstays for fiscal year 2016 decreased to 544,676, rendering
the Suspected In-Country Overstay rate as 1.07 percent. In other words,
as of January 10, 2017, DHS has been able to confirm departures,
changes to, or adjustment of status of more than 98.90 percent of
nonimmigrant visitors scheduled to depart in fiscal year 2016 via air
and sea POEs, and that number continues to grow.
This report separates VWP country overstay numbers from non-VWP
country numbers. For VWP countries, the fiscal year 2016 Suspected In-
Country Overstay rate is 0.60 percent of the 21,616,034 expected
departures. For non-VWP countries, the fiscal year 2016 Suspected In-
Country Overstay rate is 1.90 percent of the 13,848,480 expected
departures.
As mentioned previously, part of the nonimmigrant population in
this year's report now includes visitors who entered on a student or
exchange visitor visa, F, M, or J visa, respectively. DHS has
determined there were 1,457,556 students and exchange visitors
scheduled to complete their program in the United States. However, 5.48
percent stayed beyond their authorized window for departure at the end
of their program.
For Canada, the fiscal year 2016 Suspected In-Country Overstay rate
is 1.33 percent of 9,008,496 expected departures. For Mexico, the
fiscal year 2016 Suspected In-Country Overstay rate is 1.52 percent of
3,079,524 expected departures. Consistent with the methodology for
other countries, this represents only travel through air and sea POEs
and does not include data on land border crossings. Currently, it is
unclear if these numbers are inflated as Canadian and Mexican nationals
can depart across the land border. CBP is pursuing a variety of methods
to obtain this land border departure data, which will be discussed in
greater detail below.
Identifying overstays is important for National security, public
safety, immigration enforcement, and processing applications for
immigration benefits and is one of the many drivers for DHS as it
continues to develop and test the entry and exit system during fiscal
year 2017, both biometric and biographic, which will improve the
ability of CBP to report this data accurately.
overstay enforcement in the united states
With regard to overstay enforcement, ICE focuses its efforts on
identifying and prioritizing, for enforcement action, foreign nationals
who overstayed their period of admission or otherwise violated the
terms or conditions of their admission to the United States. ICE
receives nonimmigrant compliance information from various investigative
databases and DHS entry/exit registration systems. The information
identifies nonimmigrants who have entered the United States through an
established immigration entry process and may have failed to comply
with immigration regulations. As part of a tiered review, ICE Homeland
Security Investigations (HSI) prioritizes nonimmigrant overstay cases
through risk-based analysis. HSI's Counterterrorism and Criminal
Exploitation Unit (CTCEU) oversees the National program dedicated to
the investigation of nonimmigrant visa violators who may pose a
National security or public safety risk.
Using a comprehensive prioritization scheme, ICE identifies
nonimmigrant overstays, conducts in-depth analysis, locates targets,
and initiates field investigations by referring high-priority
information to ICE HSI field offices Nation-wide. In order to ensure
that those who may pose the greatest threats to National security and
public safety are given top priority, ICE uses intelligence-based
criteria developed in close consultation with the intelligence and law
enforcement communities. ICE chairs the Compliance Enforcement Advisory
Panel (CEAP), comprised of subject-matter experts from other law
enforcement agencies and members of the intelligence community, who
assist in maintaining targeting methods in line with the most current
threat information. This practice, which is designed to detect and
identify individuals exhibiting specific risk factors based on
intelligence reporting, travel patterns, and in-depth criminal research
and analysis, has contributed to DHS's counterterrorism mission by
initiating and supporting high-priority National security initiatives
based on specific intelligence.
Each year, ICE HSI CTCEU analyzes records of hundreds of thousands
of potential status violators after preliminary analysis of data from
the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System and CBP's ADIS,
along with other information. Once the leads are received, ICE conducts
both batch and manual vetting against Government databases, social
media, and public indices. This vetting establishes compliance or
departure from the United States and/or determines potential violations
that warrant field investigations. Overstays who do not meet ICE HSI
CTCEU's National security and public safety threat criteria are
referred to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) for action.
As part of its vetting process, ICE HSI CTCEU also instituted the
Visa Waiver Enforcement Program (VWEP). ICE HSI CTCEU scrutinizes
individuals identified as potential VWP violators, to identify those
subjects who attempt to circumvent the U.S. immigration system by
seeking to exploit VWP travel. Other significant projects and
initiatives include: The Recurrent Student Vetting Program; DHS's
Overstay Projects; Absent Without Leave (AWOL) Program; INTERPOL Leads;
and individuals who have been watchlisted.
In fiscal year 2016, ICE HSI CTCEU reviewed 1,282,018 compliance
leads. Numerous leads that were referred to ICE HSI CTCEU were closed
through an automated vetting process. The most common reasons for
closure were subsequent departure from the United States or pending
immigration benefits. A total of 4,116 leads were sent to HSI field
offices for investigation. From the 4,116 leads sent to the field,
1,884 are currently under investigation, 1,126 were closed as being in
compliance (pending immigration benefit, granted asylum, approved
adjustment of status application, or departed the United States) and
the remaining leads were returned to ICE HSI CTCEU for continuous
monitoring and further investigation. HSI Special Agents made 1,261
arrests, secured 97 indictments, and 55 convictions in fiscal year
2016.
Improvements in Information Sharing, Data Integrity, and Use of
Biometrics
ICE executes risk-based overstay enforcement activities as part of
an integrated strategy to combat transnational crime in coordination
with our domestic and foreign partnering agencies, targeting the
illegal movement of people, merchandise, and monetary instruments into,
within, and out of the United States. In addition to developing viable
leads for field investigation, ICE's in-depth vetting efforts serve to
continually improve DHS's overall data holdings, and the information it
can bring to protecting the homeland. That validated information is
used to update the various DHS systems, including ADIS.
ICE has been an integral partner supporting the creation of a DHS
Unified Overstay Case Management process that established a data
exchange interface between ADIS, ATS-P, and ICE's LeadTrac systems.
That effort has helped reduce the time line required for vetting
National security-related and public safety overstay leads.
Improvements in Overstay Enforcement and OIG Recommendations
ICE is committed to improving and evolving our overstay enforcement
efforts, including through advancing our information technology
capabilities. In 2014, ICE HSI CTCEU established the Open-Source Team
(OST) to conduct social media analysis to help resolve unable-to-locate
cases. OST applies in-depth knowledge of a broad range of publicly-
available information to locate specific targeted individuals, identify
trends and patterns, and identify subtle relationships. This initiative
enhances investigative leads that are currently being sent to HSI field
offices for investigation. In August 2016, ICE HSI CTCEU's Overstay
Lifecycle and Domestic Mantis Pilot Programs were launched. These pilot
programs will help to better capture information on visa violators as
part of an overarching visa life cycle and identify foreign students
who have access to sensitive technology. The Overstay Lifecycle pilot
program tracks nonimmigrant visitors from the time they file a visa
application to the time they depart from the United States, or until
such time as they become an overstay or otherwise fail to comply with
their terms of admission. The Domestic Mantis pilot program identifies
nonimmigrant students who enter the United States to study in a non-
sensitive academic field and subsequently transfer to a sensitive
academic field, or attempt to work in areas posing a National security
or public safety threat. It is anticipated that these pilot programs
will provide another layer of security and tool for overstay
enforcement in the United States.
Finally, we are working with DHS to address the recommendation in
the recent report released by the DHS Office of Inspector General
(OIG). The report included two recommendations for ICE and ICE is
working to identify training gaps for visa-related IT systems used by
ICE personnel and to notify the ICE user community of available
training options. ICE is also working towards compiling a comprehensive
list of all visa-related systems across the Department, to include
system owners and training points of contacts. By addressing these two
concerns and ensuring that ICE users have the opportunity to receive
official, hands-on training in visa IT systems and documented guidance
on potential uses of each system, the efficiency and adeptness of the
visa overstay tracking system will be enhanced. In the immediate term,
ICE HSI has sent guidance to all HSI field offices providing further
instruction on how to conduct HSI CTCEU investigations.
The DHS Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is currently
building an enterprise information-sharing platform that, in the
future, can provide a solution to mitigate the issues raised and gaps
identified in the OIG report. The vision of the Data Framework is to
deliver an information-sharing platform in which intelligence analysts
and mission operators have controlled, near-real-time access to
consolidated homeland security data in Classified and Unclassified
environments in a manner consistent with applicable law and policy and
while protecting individuals' privacy, civil rights, and liberties.
OCIO has been building the platform for the Classified environment.
In fiscal year 2017, the OCIO is beginning to focus on the Unclassified
environment portion of the Data Framework. This would afford the
components the ability to timely access within articulated constraints,
the relevant and necessary homeland security information they need to
successfully perform their duties, identifying overstays and reporting
on overstay numbers, being two such duties. The goal of the Data
Framework is to provide a mission user with the ability to access,
search, manipulate, and analyze, as appropriate, different data sets
extracted from multiple DHS systems for a specific purpose; retrieve
accurate and timely information; and view the information in a clear
and accessible format.
cbp comprehensive biometric entry/exit system
Since fiscal year 2013, CBP has led the entry/exit mission,
including research and development of biometric exit programs. A
comprehensive entry/exit system that leverages both biographic and
biometric data is key to supporting DHS's mission. CBP developed and
implemented a series of biometric exit pilot programs in the air and
land environments between 2014 and 2016, and we testified regarding
those efforts in June 2016.
Biometric Exit in the Air Environment
The earlier trials allowed CBP to develop a realistic and
achievable biometric exit plan. CBP's vision for implementing biometric
exit is to ``pre-stage'' biometric data throughout the travel process
and allow that data to be used by each traveler as they follow the
typical process for boarding an aircraft departing the United States.
CBP will perform the matching function and use biometrics to streamline
the passenger process throughout the air travel process, not just at
departure. CBP's process for matching ``pre-stage'' biometric data to
biometric data captured at departure is described in greater detail
below.
Adding biometrics provides greater assurance of the information
already collected by CBP and will allow for future facilitated
processing upon both entry and exit. CBP will use a traveler's face as
the primary way of identifying the traveler to facilitate entry and
exit from the United States, while simultaneously leveraging
fingerprints for watch list checks. This innovative structure will make
it possible to confirm the identity of travelers at any point in their
travel, while at the same time establishing a comprehensive biometric
air exit system.
CBP is dedicated to protecting the privacy of all travelers, and
will ensure that all legal and privacy requirements are met as we
continue to implement biometric exit.
CBP's plan is to complete the technical matching service by 2018,
but this summer CBP will roll out biometric air exit technical
demonstrations at a number of airports to continue biometric exit
implementation. These demonstrations will occur at select flights in
each of the airports.
CBP Traveler Verification Service (TVS)
The technical demonstrations are based on a concept that CBP has
been testing since June 2016 at Atlanta Hartsfield International
Airport. The Atlanta airport demonstration tested a solution under five
guiding principles: (1) Avoid adding any new process to minimize time
and impact; (2) utilize existing infrastructure to avoid large capital
costs and enable a near-term deployment; (3) leverage existing
stakeholder systems, processes, and business models to reduce costs and
avoid large changes for all stakeholders; (4) leverage passenger
behaviors and expectations to promote ease of use for travelers; and
(5) use existing traveler data and existing Government IT
infrastructure to reduce costs and avoid stove-piped systems.
The Atlanta test was designed using existing CBP systems,
leveraging data already provided to the U.S. Government by the traveler
and airlines. CBP created a pre-positioned ``gallery'' of face images
from DHS holdings based on a flight departure manifest provided by the
airline. These photographs can come from passport applications, visa
applications, or interactions with CBP at a prior border encounter
where a photograph is typically taken. Essentially, CBP creates a
gallery of all the passengers it expects to see boarding an aircraft,
based on the manifest provided by the airline.
CBP then compares a live photograph of the traveler captured at the
departure gate to the flight's gallery of face images to confirm the
traveler's departure, providing a biometric record of departure for
passengers on that flight. This process allows CBP to increase security
by using a facial biometric to match the traveler to their advanced
passenger information and biographic vetting results while
simultaneously checking the fingerprints on file against the watch
list.
U.S. Citizens are not exempted from this process for two reasons:
First, it is not feasible to require airlines to have two separate
boarding processes for U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens, and second,
to ensure U.S. citizen travelers are the true bearer of the passport
they are presenting for travel.
If the photograph captured at boarding is matched to a U.S. citizen
passport, the photograph is discarded after a short period of time.
In essence, for U.S. citizens the document check has been
transformed from a manual process by airline personnel or CBP officers
into an automated process using a machine. It is important to note that
CBP is committed to privacy and has engaged our privacy office at every
step in the process to add biometrics to the departure process from the
United States.
CBP has processed approximately 28,000 travelers through the
Atlanta demonstration. For travelers who have an existing photograph in
DHS systems--about 96 percent of travelers--the system matched at a 90
percent rate or higher.\8\ Today, CBP continues to process biometric
exit records for a limited number of daily international flights in
Atlanta.
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\8\ Two of the most common reasons for not having a photo within
DHS systems is flying as a U.S. citizen under military orders or as an
alien who entered the United States without inspection.
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Summer 2017 Technical Demonstrations
Based on the success of the Atlanta demonstration, CBP will
demonstrate the initial implementation of the TVS through the expansion
of air exit capabilities to eight airports during the summer of 2017.
The capability will utilize the TVS to biometrically identify departing
travelers, and demonstrate to airlines and airports how biometrics can
be integrated into current boarding processes.
Stakeholder Outreach
In addition to CBP demonstrations, CBP is executing a proactive
engagement strategy with partners within the travel industry to execute
public/private partnerships. The goal of these engagements is to
demonstrate an integrated, comprehensive approach to identity
verification that provides a seamless travel experience.
To this end, CBP has introduced the Biometric Entry/Exit vision to
the air travel industry including international airports, U.S. airline
carriers, and travel organizations.\9\ By involving all of the
stakeholders, CBP is able to discuss and refine the solution and verify
potential benefits for all stakeholders.
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\9\ Including the A4A, ACI-NA, AAAE, and IATA.
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CBP is now collaborating with U.S. carriers and planning
demonstration pilots. For these pilots, airlines will procure the
biometric facial cameras and integrate with CBP's provided TVS. CBP has
also begun discussions with numerous international carriers on the
biometric exit vision. Under this approach, CBP will learn best
practices for operations and integration into existing airline boarding
processes as these processes vary among airlines and airports.
CBP is working closely with stakeholders to ensure successful
implementation of biometric exit and transform the entry process.
Biometric technology has the potential to transform how travelers
interact with airports, airlines, and CBP, which has the potential to
create a seamless travel process, improving both convenience and
security.
Biometric Exit in the Land Environment
In pursuing a biometric exit system, DHS is cognizant of
limitations posed by existing infrastructure. In the land environment,
there are often geographical features that prevent expansion of exit
lanes to accommodate adding lanes or CBP-manned booths. CBP has
developed a biometric exit land strategy that focuses on implementing
an interim exit capability while simultaneously investigating
innovative technologies needed to reach our long-term vision of a
comprehensive biometric exit land solution. Recording exits and
biometrically verifying travelers who depart at the land border will
close a gap of information necessary to complete a nonimmigrant
traveler's record in ADIS, and will allow CBP an additional means to
determine when travelers who depart the United States via land have
overstayed their admission period.
Land-Phased Approach
Given the limitations outlined above and DHS's desire to implement
this program without negatively impacting cross-border commerce, a
phased approached to land implementation will be undertaken. The
initial implementation of the land exit strategy will require certain
third-country nationals to self-report their departure from the United
States. Third-country nationals are defined as those who are neither
American, Mexican, nor Canadian, and for this initial phase, will be
limited to nonimmigrant visa holders, types B-1 or B-2 or VWP
travelers.
In addition, facial recognition technology, similar to what will be
used in the air environment will be deployed at two ports on the
Southwest Border in both pedestrian entry and exit locations. Facial
recognition technology will be implemented for frequent travelers and
cameras will be located within the vicinity of primary processing
booths. At pedestrian departure, cameras will also record facial images
upon departure and once the camera system identifies a ``match''
(confirms the identity of the traveler), the system will record a
biometrically-confirmed exit for the traveler.
Biographic Exit Exchange Partnerships with Canada and Mexico
At the Northern land border, as part of the Beyond the Border
Action Plan with Canada, the United States and Canada are implementing
a biographic exchange of traveler records that constitutes a biographic
exit system on the shared border. Today, traveler records for all
lawful permanent residents and non-citizens of the United States and
Canada who enter either country through land POEs on the Northern
Border are exchanged in such a manner that land entries into one
country serve as exit records from the other. The current match rate of
Canadian records for travelers leaving the United States for Canada
against U.S. entry records for nonimmigrants is over 98 percent. In
April 2016, Canada reaffirmed its commitment to the United States to
complete the program to include all travelers who cross the Northern
Border. Canada will need to complete passage of additional legislation
to facilitate this final phase.
Engagement with Mexico on establishing a similar collection and
exchange of entry/exit information is under way, and both countries
plan to implement a biographic data exchange at the San Ysidro port of
entry early in fiscal year 2018, using reading of radio-frequency ID
documents (RFID) which are very common among Southern Border crossers.
Biometric Vehicle Capture ``At Speed''
In 2016, CBP conducted a field of ``at speed'' facial biometric
capture technology on vehicle outbound travelers. The results from the
feasibility analysis of the field test will be used to conduct market
research to identify and evaluate production-ready solutions available
in the market. Technical specifications established by the field test
will be used to conduct a controlled test facilities to determine
equipment placement and number of cameras necessary to capture
photographs beyond the driver, and to establish the performance metrics
baseline. In addition, comparative analysis will be performed on facial
recognition matching algorithms being developed by academia and
industry on images captured during the field test. These two tests will
culminate in an operational experiment of cameras, camera placement,
algorithm matching accuracy, and performance results at an outbound
port with optimal conditions.
fee collections for exit activities
In the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Pub. L. No. 114-113),
Congress provided CBP with a fee-funded account for biometric entry/
exit activities, which may collect up to $1 billion by fiscal year
2025.
CBP has completed a spend plan and acquisition plan to account for
the execution of these funds and these are currently being evaluated as
part of the DHS Acquisition Review Board. As mentioned, CBP plans to
partner with private industry in order to achieve our goal of
development of a biometric exit system. Of note, while the funds
provided through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 will enable
CBP to take the next major steps in development of a biometric entry/
exit system at the highest volume airports, full Nation-wide deployment
of a comprehensive entry-exit system at all ports of entry will require
additional resources not available from the authorized surcharges.
conclusion
While implementation of a robust and efficient biometric exit
solution will take time, and significant challenges remain, DHS is
aggressively moving forward in development of a comprehensive biometric
exit system, in the land, air, and sea environments. We are proud of
our progress. We look forward to the technical demonstrations in major
airports coming this summer, and will continue to share our on-going
findings with this subcommittee. Through these and related efforts, we
will continue to build on the progress we have made in our ability to
identify, report, and take appropriate action against those who
overstay or violate the terms of their admission to the United States.
Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and distinguished Members
of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to testify today on
this important issue. We look forward to answering your questions.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Dougherty.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Wagner for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOHN WAGNER, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
COMMISSIONER, U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Wagner. Good afternoon, Chairwoman McSally, Ranking
Member Vela, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss U.S. Customs and
Border Protection's progress since last year for its
implementation of a comprehensive biometric entry and exit
system.
Before that, let me touch on the overstay report we
released yesterday. This year's report accounts for 96 percent
of all air and sea non-immigrant admissions for fiscal year
2016 at air and sea locations. We have expanded the report to
include additional categories of temporary visitors, including
foreign students, exchange visitors, and certain worker
classifications.
Last fiscal year, there were approximately 50.4 million in-
scope non-immigrant admissions through the air and sea
locations who were expected to depart. Of this number, DHS has
calculated a total overstay rate of approximately 1.47 percent,
which is about 739,000 individuals. Of these, about 628,000
remained in the United States, or 1.25 percent at the end of
the fiscal year.
Due to continuing departures, that number is currently at
about 455,000 or 0.9 percent. I am happy to discuss that report
further.
So moving to biometric exit, last year I testified before
the subcommittee and described some of the pilots that CBP and
DHS have conducted over the years and the many challenges we
have faced in developing a feasible biometric exit solution. I
understand your frustration with the pace of this.
I also recognize that Congress has made $1 billion
available over the next decade for biometric exit and
essentially funded a program in advance of DHS having a real
plan on how to implement.
As I have said publicly, we are out of time and we are out
of excuses. So the good news is we have developed a feasible
solution. We have had a lot of discussions with private-sector
technology experts and many stakeholders. We knew for this to
be successful, we couldn't implement another stand-alone,
stove-piped process, adding yet another new process for
travelers to learn.
We certainly couldn't rearrange, in the near term, how
airports are built or the operating model of the airline
industry. So the biggest factor in our struggle to find a
solution was relying on finding that single magic piece of
technology that would accomplish our needs.
Previous efforts never really took a deep look at the
processes behind how our data systems already function. So we
figured out a way to better position the data we already have
on travelers, to make the inspection process a lot more
efficient.
In non-technical terms, we moved the biometrics of the
traveler expected to be on a departing flight out of the DHS
open database and into its own temporary and secure database
until we encounter the person. By doing so, we can now skip
reading the passport first. Like all other countries require
who have smart gates and a lot of the technology we have seen
developed, we can go straight to collecting a biometric and
matching against the gallery. This makes the process a lot
quicker and the infrastructure footprint much smaller, less
expensive, and much more manageable to implement.
So we put this concept to test using facial recognition on
a flight in Atlanta. We created a pre-positioned gallery of
facial images we had already collected and compared a live
photograph of the traveler boarding the plane, thus creating a
biometric record of departure.
We have processed about 28,000 travelers through this
Atlanta demonstration over the last 10 months, matching at a
rate at high 90 percentile for travelers who have a photograph
available. So this validated our concept on how to use the
data, coupled with the latest technology and fitting within the
operational model of the airline and the airports. It is easy
for travelers to use. Everybody knows how to take a picture.
So while facial recognition will be used, we will continue
to collect fingerprints from foreign nationals upon initial
encounters. Both biometrics will be fused together in our
systems and the fingerprint results can be returned by matching
a photo associated with them.
So we are getting the same vetting results as if we had
read the fingerprints or the passport. This is just a more
efficient, convenient, and user-friendly way of traveler
verification without losing any of the security benefits.
We have introduced this vision to the air travel industry.
Beginning this summer, we will roll out 6 to 10 biometric air
exit demonstrations at airports. The demonstrations will occur
at select flights at each of the airports.
Some of these will be utilizing airline or airport-provided
technology through cameras at self-boarding gates. This will
allow our stakeholders to work with the new process, and we can
jointly develop an implementation strategy that also conforms
to their own modernization plans.
Now, CBP is not neglecting the land environment. The land
strategy will consist of initially requiring third-country
nationals, non-Mexican citizens, non-Canadian citizens, to
self-report their departure from the United States at the land
border ports.
There are very few of these travelers making a final
departure from the United States, only a few hundred a day, if
that. We will commence a notification process later this year
to advise travelers of these new requirements.
In addition, facial recognition technology will be deployed
at two Southwest Border land ports of entry for pedestrians and
exit later this year. This configuration will be developed so
it is expandable to other pedestrian locations.
So in conclusion, we would have a feasible, efficient
biometric exit solution at all modes, with the exception of
land border vehicles. It is a matter of building out the I.T.
back-end services and infrastructure to support this on a
National basis, while simultaneously working with the industry
stakeholders to incorporate their own automation efforts into
the exit infrastructure.
So thank you for the opportunity to appear today, and I
look forward to your questions.
Ms. McSally. Thank you Mr. Wagner.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Settles for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF CLARK SETTLES, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
SECURITY DIVISION, HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Settles. Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and
distinguished Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear today to discuss how ICE Homeland
Security investigations, HSI, investigates visa overstays and
to highlight improvements HSI has implemented in overstay
enforcement.
HSI's Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Exploitation Units,
CTCEU, focuses on identifying and prioritizing its enforcement
efforts toward overstays who are still in the country,
otherwise known as in-country overstays, who may pose a
National security or public safety threat.
On a daily basis, HSI agents ingest thousands of potential
overstay leads from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP's
Arrival and Departure Information System, ADIS, from HSI
Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS, and
other referrals on foreign nationals who may have overstayed
their mission period or otherwise violated the terms of their
admission to the United States.
When leads are received by the CTCEU team, they go through
an automated and manual vetting process based on a prioritized
risk-based framework. Lead packages that include all available
information and instructions on how to adjudicate the leads are
sent to the HSI SAC offices Nation-wide for further
investigation by local trained and experienced field agents.
In fiscal year 2016 HSI reviewed approximately 1.2 million
unvalidated overstay leads. Numerous leads were closed through
the above-described vetting process due to subsequent
departures from the United States, a change in status or
pending immigration benefits.
Those that did not meet HSI's threat criteria were referred
to ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, ERO, for further
action.
Of the overstay leads remaining within HSI's purview, 4,116
lead packages were sent to HSI field offices for further
investigation. From those leads, HSI special agents made 1,261
arrests, secured 97 indictments and 55 convictions.
One thousand eight hundred and eighty-four cases are still
currently under investigation. Another 1,126 were closed as
being in compliance. The remaining leads were cycled back into
continuous monitoring for further research as new information
is revealed.
However, we at HSI are committed to always doing better in
advancing our capabilities, as technology has developed and as
resources allow, and overstay enforcement is certainly no
exception.
I would like to take a moment to highlight a recent pilot
program in overstay enforcement, an effort to prevent overstays
by pushing the borders out and our effort to improve data.
First, our overstay life-cycle pilot is an effort to ensure
continuous monitoring. Started last year, HSI is tracking non-
immigrant visitors who file visa applications at certain visa
security posts, from the time they apply through their
departure from the United States. This continuous review allows
HSI the ability to take actions should derogatory information
be uncovered at any point in the visa life cycle.
Second, HSI, in collaboration with the Department of
Defense and CBP, developed a biometric program called BITMAP,
to target high-risk subjects who are en route to the United
States.
Through BITMAP, we provide capability to our foreign
partners to tactically collect biometric and biographic data on
persons of interest they encounter. If such individuals are
identified as threats to U.S. National security, HSI and our
U.S. Government partners work with host nations to take
appropriate law enforcement action.
In addition, BITMAP collections bring individuals of
interest to our attention so that we can prevent them from
acquiring visas and stop admission to the United States at
future encounters.
One example of BITMAP program success involves an Eastern
European national encountered in South America. Through BITMAP,
the subject was found to be a match to a no-fly record. When
confronted and questioned, he identified himself as a foreign
fighter. He was detained for deportation in South America and
his travel was stopped.
This is what HSI is striving to do: Identify such
individuals and prevent them from reaching the United States.
Third, HSI has been an integral partner in improving the
data interface between DHS systems to streamline our ability to
identify overstays. Through modernization of lead track and
SEVIS, we are advancing DHS information sharing and expediting
overstay vetting. A number of initiatives are on-going at DHS
to enable systems to provide person-centric, rather than event-
specific data that will help us better prioritize our cases.
Before concluding, let me emphasize how seriously we take
the recommendations from OIG and GAO reviews. When I came into
this job from the field, just a few weeks ago, and was given
the last OIG report, I took action immediately in response to
concerns about field training and overstay investigations.
I re-sent the CTCEU Overstay Handbook and guidance to all
of the HSI field offices and agents. This handbook provides
detailed instructions on what systems to use and how to conduct
overstay investigations.
I also launched a plan to reinvigorate our regional
training program, including training on systems, because if
even one agent is confused on how to investigate one of these
leads, it is not acceptable.
Thank you again for inviting me today to explain HSI's
critical role in the overstay enforcement process. I will be
pleased to answer any of your questions. Thank you.
Ms. McSally. Thank you, Mr. Settles.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Roth for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOHN ROTH, INSPECTOR GENERAL, OFFICE OF THE
INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Roth. Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, Members
of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to
testify to discuss our work relating to visa overstays,
including our most recent audit report. The results of our
audit revealed that DHS information technology systems do not
effectively support ICE visa tracking operations for a number
of reasons.
First, identifying potential visa overstays requires
pulling data from dozens of systems and databases, some of
which are not integrated and do not electronically share
information.
This is necessary because four different DHS components
ICE, CBP, USCIS, and the National Protection and Programs
Directorate, as well as numerous entities outside of DHS, are
involved in managing the overstay issue.
Much of the data that is stored is not in easily
retrievable fields. As an illustration of the disjointed nature
of the I.T. systems involved, ICE investigators need to retain
up to 40 different passwords, each with different access
restrictions and expiration dates, for up to 27 different
information systems.
Second, real-time access or access to real-time data is
hampered by system access restrictions. ICE personnel are
sometimes unable to gain access to USCIS systems, despite
having the need to do so. Some data is retained in paper-based
files, which can take considerable time to access, and some
systems are not frequently updated.
Third, ICE personnel do not have the training and guidance
they need to effectively identify and utilize the numerous
systems currently used for visa overstay tracking. ICE
personnel in the field are not always sure which systems to use
to perform their specific job functions.
Personnel we met at multiple locations expressed concerns
that they were unaware of all the systems available to them
across DHS components and agencies, potentially limiting their
effectiveness in carrying out their visa tracking
responsibilities.
Last, in the absence of a comprehensive biometric exit
system at U.S. ports, DHS relies on third-party departure data,
such as passenger lists from airlines, which is not always
accurate and fails to capture land departure data, which
accounts for the vast majority of visitors leaving the United
States.
These deficiencies have a significant real-world impact,
including a backlog of more than 1.2 million visa overstay
cases, an inability to estimate, with any degree of confidence,
the number of individuals who are actually overstaying, which
results in a poor understanding of the problem and incomplete
reporting to Congress.
Considerable resources are wasted investigating thousands
of leads that could have been eliminated, such as individuals
who had already left the country or applied for and received
immigration benefits.
In fact, during our review, we found that HSI agents spend
40 percent of their caseload investigating individuals they
should not be investigating, largely because they were in
compliance with the law or had left the country. Part of the
problem is that the Department has historically done a poor job
of requiring I.T. integration, which results in a fragmented
and decentralized system.
The DHS chief information officer should provide greater
oversight and centralized management of DHS I.T. systems. This
is a long-standing issue we have repeatedly reported on.
Additionally, the ICE chief information officer must provide
adequate training and guidance to personnel in the field about
how to properly use current data systems.
Finally, CBP must continue to work on moving forward with
the biometric entry-exit system, which will assist in
streamlining ICE's investigative efforts. Until the Department
properly equips its personnel with the tools and training
required for the vital work of tracking visitors who overstay
their visas, timely identification, investigation, and
adjudication of visa overstays will not be possible, increasing
the risk to public safety and National security.
We made five recommendations in our audit report that we
will believe will assist in making the process more efficient.
The Department and its components have agreed with each of our
recommendations and is implementing corrective action. We will
monitor the progress the Department makes and report as needed.
This concludes my testimony. I will be happy to answer any
questions you or other Members of the committee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Roth follows:]
Prepared Statement of John Roth
May 23, 2017
Chairwoman McSally, Ranking Member Vela, and Members of the
subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General's
(OIG) work relating to visa overstays, including our recent audit
report, DHS Tracking of Visa verstays Is Hindered by Insufficient
Technology.\1\
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\1\ DHS Tracking of Visa Overstays Is Hindered by Insufficient
Technology, OIG-17-56 (May 2017).
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The results of our audit revealed that DHS's information technology
(IT) systems do not effectively support U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) visa tracking operations for the following reasons:
Identifying and investigating potential visa overstays
requires pulling data from dozens of systems and databases,
some of which are not integrated and do not electronically
share information;
Access to real-time data is mired by system access
restrictions, the need to retain up to 40 passwords, and
systems that are not updated;
ICE personnel do not have the training and guidance they
need to effectively identify and utilize the myriad systems
currently available for visa overstay tracking; and
In the absence of a comprehensive biometric exit system at
U.S. ports, DHS relies on third-party departure data, which is
not always accurate and fails to capture land departure data,
which accounts for the vast majority of visitors exiting the
United States.
These deficiencies have significant real-world impact, including:
A backlog of more than 1.2 million visa overstay cases;
Considerable resources wasted investigating thousands of
leads that should have been ruled out as visa overstays (e.g.,
individuals who already left the country or applied for/
received immigration benefits);
Arrests of less than 0.4 percent of the individuals who
potentially overstayed their visas; and
Congress receiving DHS visa overstay reports that
underestimate and distort the true scope of the visa overstay
problem.
Until the Department properly equips its personnel with the tools
and training required for the vital work of tracking visitors who
overstay their visas, timely identification, investigation, and
adjudication of visa overstays will not be possible, increasing the
risk to public safety and National security.
background
When a nonimmigrant visitor is admitted to the country but exceeds
the authorized period of admission, the visitor becomes an
``overstay.'' According to DHS reports, only a small percentage (1.17
percent) of visa holders overstayed their admission periods in 2015;
however, their impact on National security can be great. For example, 2
of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 were visa overstays. This
prompted the 9/11 Commission to call for the government to ensure that
all visitors to the United States are tracked on entry and exit.
DHS has primary responsibility for identifying visa overstays and
taking enforcement action to address security risks. Within DHS,
multiple components play a role in tracking, investigating,
apprehending, and deporting overstays. For example, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) collects biographic and biometric information
to document arrival and departure information on individuals arriving
in the United States at U.S. ports of entry.
CBP officers also determine nonimmigrant admissibility into the
United States and provide an ``admit until date,'' by which time the
individual must leave the country. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) processes and maintains documentation pertaining to a
visa holder's immigration status. And ICE leads immigration enforcement
operations and is responsible for in-country nonimmigrant visa overstay
tracking and enforcement. Information sharing and collaboration among
these components is critical for timely and accurate identification,
tracking, and adjudication of potential visa overstays.
The Department has an electronic automated vetting process for
identifying nonimmigrant visa holders who may have remained in the
country beyond their period of admission. A suspected overstay is
automatically flagged in DHS's systems when there is no record of
nonimmigrant departure or change in visitor status. In fiscal year
2015, through this process, DHS identified more than 970,000 possible
overstays and sent them to the ICE Counterterrorism and Criminal
Exploitation (CCE) Unit for further investigation. We conducted our
audit to determine the effectiveness of ICE's information technology
(IT) systems to review, track, and share information associated with
visas.
fragmented it systems hinder efficient and effective overstay tracking
The myriad of information systems and databases used in DHS for
visa tracking are not effective in identifying nonimmigrant overstays.
Some of these systems and databases are ``stove-piped'' and do not
electronically share information, resulting in numerous inefficiencies.
For example, CCE Unit analysts use up to 27 distinct DHS information
systems and databases to gather data on potential overstays, including:
CBP's Arrival and Departure Information System (ADIS) for
biographic information on travelers entering and departing
ports of entry;
ICE's Investigative Case Management System/TECS
Modernization for law enforcement information and case
management capabilities;
USCIS' Central Index System for data on individuals applying
for immigrant and nonimmigrant benefits and status, including
violators of immigration law; and
National Protection and Programs Directorate's Automated
Biometric Identification System (IDENT) to correlate biometric
data with associated biographic data.
Despite some recent system integration efforts, ICE personnel has
to conduct cumbersome and manual searches across these myriad systems
to gather data for each individual, such as country of origin,
immigration status, and criminal history. For example, CCE Unit
analysts at ICE headquarters rely on approximately 17 systems,
including 13 DHS and 4 external systems and databases, to compile a
case file for each lead for investigation. Further, ICE personnel in
the field used as many as 18 distinct DHS systems and databases, as
well as approximately 5 external systems, to conduct investigations to
accurately determine an individual's overstay status. Because these
systems were each designed and built for a distinct purpose, these
systems contain only the fields of information relevant for performing
the functions necessary to support that purpose, leaving ICE agents and
analysts to ``connect the dots'' when conducting investigative queries.
The lack of integration poses confusion for the system users. For
example, ICE personnel in the field are not always sure which systems
to use to perform their specific job functions. Personnel we met at
multiple locations expressed concerns that they are unaware of all
systems available to them across DHS components and agencies,
potentially limiting their effectiveness in carrying out their visa
tracking responsibilities. Additionally, ICE personnel has to retain
and use anywhere from 10 to 40 passwords, which is cumbersome as users
may log into dozens of systems each week, all with separate passwords.
The vast number of passwords and different protocols are difficult to
remember and increases the potential for denial of access and system
lock-outs.
Further, ICE agents and officers face challenges using these
systems to obtain real-time access to information about the immigration
status of potential overstays, which is critical to properly validate
whether or not a subject is in the United States legally at the time of
investigation. ICE needs to know when a foreign national under
investigation files a petition or application to change his or her
nonimmigrant status (i.e., extend the time allowed in the country).
However, obtaining timely immigration status information has proven
difficult due to the unstructured manner in which data is stored.
Specifically, USCIS employs nearly a dozen unintegrated systems that
were individually designed to process a particular application rather
than to support all transactions associated with a single applicant.
Consequently, ICE personnel have to conduct searches in multiple USCIS
systems to compile the complete history of an individual and determine
his or her current immigration status. This can take several hours, or
several days, depending on the case.
Obtaining accurate information on immigration status is even more
problematic when ICE personnel cannot gain access to some USCIS
systems. When an ICE user cannot access a particular system, or in the
event that immigration files have not been scanned or digitized, the
user has to obtain the required information from USCIS personnel in
hard copy. ICE agents and officers complain that the wait time to
obtain needed files can sometimes stretch to weeks or more, which
delays each case from moving forward and potentially results in
investigations of overstay subjects who USCIS has already approved for
changes of status.
In 2006, USCIS created a consolidated search capability, the Person
Centric Query Service, to provide a single search capability for
immigration and naturalization applications and transactions. Although
several ICE agents and officers found the service beneficial and
comprehensive, personnel at four field locations were unaware of it or
lacked access to the system. Other ICE users questioned the reliability
or completeness of the data returned when using this query service. As
a result, ICE users felt compelled to separately confirm the data in
legacy systems and/or query for more in-depth information.
Unintegrated Systems Used for Visa Overstay Tracking
Persist in the Decentralized IT Environment
The stove-piped systems used for visa tracking were inherited from
the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). With the
creation of DHS in 2003, INS was split into three separate components:
CBP, ICE, and USCIS. Each component carried forward the legacy INS
systems it needed to accomplish its respective mission
responsibilities. Over time, distinct IT infrastructures evolved within
each of the components, resulting in dozens of parallel and highly-
specialized visa-related IT systems.
In 2012, CBP began an effort to consolidate 34 disparate data
sources into a single system, Unified Passenger (UPAX). This effort was
meant to upgrade a CBP system currently used by ICE for overstay
vetting, and further integrate the numerous systems owned by CBP,
USCIS, ICE, and the Department of State. However, at the time of our
audit, CBP had not identified all potential system users DHS-wide based
on mission need. Consequently, the system was not accessible to ICE
field users to support their overstay investigations.
Despite efforts to improve visa system integration and information
sharing, the DHS Chief Information Officer (CIO) has not provided the
necessary oversight and management needed to overcome the fragmentation
of its assets, as we have repeatedly reported.\2\ In 2013, the CIO was
part of a Department-wide task force that examined how the vetting and
sharing of information associated with visa overstays could be
improved, which reportedly increased data sharing between at least two
systems--ADIS and the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.
The CIO had several other methods for improving consolidation of agency
IT investments, such as formal Department-wide IT system reviews, but
these have not yet been fully executed for visa IT systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Improvements Needed to DHS' Information Technology Management
Structure, OIG-04-30 (July 2004); Progress Made in Strengthening DHS
Information Technology Management, But Challenges Remain, OIG-08-91
(September 2008); DHS Information Technology Management Has Improved,
But Challenges Remain, OIG-12-82 (May 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, further guidance and training is needed to support
visa tracking in the field. Not all ICE personnel are familiar with the
distinct functions and capabilities offered within each system. ICE
field personnel expressed concern that they might miss information due
to a lack of training on system functionality and features. While ICE
field personnel have access to training on-line or through informal
coaching methods, many in the field do not consider this training
sufficient. In addition, ICE management has not provided field users
with documented procedures on which systems should be used to perform
various steps of the investigative process.
lack of an exit system hampers dhs's ability to capture accurate and
complete departure data
In addition to the myriad stove-piped systems, DHS lacks a system
at U.S. ports of departure to capture data on exiting visitors. ICE
field personnel we interviewed commonly cited this as the most
significant gap in the Department's ability to accurately track visa
overstays. Although Congress has mandated that DHS implement an
integrated system that provides foreign National arrival and departure
biometrics for immigration control, enforcement, and reporting, CBP
lacks the personnel, facilities, and technology needed to account for
travelers leaving the country.
For example, airports in the United States have no designated areas
or checkpoints to collect biometric data for travelers departing the
country. Likewise, biometric land departure information is not
captured, as most travelers cross the borders to Mexico on foot or
using their own vehicles and typically are not stopped for inspection.
Additionally, biographic information is not regularly captured on the
Southern Border. Nonetheless, CBP is able to reconcile a portion of
travelers who arrive through the borders with Mexico and Canada when
their reentrance to the United States confirms their previous
departure. By agreement, the Canadian Government captures biographic
data on individuals crossing the Northern Border and shares this
information with CBP Border Patrol; however, it excludes data on
Canadian citizens traveling from the United States.\3\
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\3\ United States-Canada Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for
Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, Action Plan, December
2011.
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Congress required DHS to implement a biometric air entry-exit
system for tracking foreign nationals by 2009.\4\ To that end, DHS
established the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology
(US-VISIT) program in 2003. This program was created to develop a means
for collecting biographic and biometric data on foreign nationals
passing through U.S. airports for entryand departure. Despite multiple
pilots of this and other programs, however, virtually no progress was
made. In 2013, Congress transferred responsibility for the biometric
exit system to CBP.\5\ Since that time, CBP has initiated several
pilots to test different technologies and capabilities, such as facial
recognition, iris scans, and mobile fingerprint collection devices. At
the time of our audit, a biometric exit system pilot was underway at
Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. CBP plans to begin
implementing the biometric exit system in 2018 at a number of airports
with the highest volume of travelers.
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\4\ 8 U.S.C. 1187 (8)(A)(i).
\5\ Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013,
Pub. L. No. 113-6 (2013).
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In the mean time, without a complete exit system that includes the
ability to obtain biometrics from visitors departing the country, DHS
has had to rely on third-party biographic data, such as commercial
carrier passenger manifests, to confirm an individual's exit from the
country.\6\ Identifying overstays in this manner involves matching
third-party exit data against the biographic and biometric data
collected by CBP at land, air, and sea ports of entry. For example, CBP
uses the IDENT system to capture biometric data (e.g., fingerprints).
Further, CBP receives commercial passenger and crew biographical data
directly from air and sea carriers through APIS prior to the passenger
and crew's arrival in or departure from the United States. APIS then
shares the data with ADIS, which works as a central repository and
automatically matches arrival and departure records to identify
potential overstays. Both ADIS and APIS share information with the
Automated Targeting System-Passenger, which vets arrival and departure
information and is used by ICE personnel to confirm a passenger's on-
board status.
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\6\ Commercial carriers are required by law to submit passenger
manifests to CBP, which are then recorded as arrivals or departures
from the United States.
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The effectiveness of this process depends on the accuracy of the
records DHS obtains from third-party commercial carriers, which
occasionally provide incorrect departure or arrival status on
individuals. Although CBP has reported that ADIS has over a 90 percent
match rate for individuals who enter the country by any given means and
then depart by air, officials acknowledge data quality issues with
specific commercial airline carriers. ICE personnel also complained of
multiple instances of false reporting on departures. For example, ADIS
sometimes falsely reports that individuals are still in the country
after they have already departed, or that individuals have left the
country when they are still physically present in the United States.
The latter occurs when airlines or other commercial carriers mistakenly
report that individuals were on board when they were not.
False departure information has resulted in ICE officers closing
visa overstay investigations of dangerous individuals, such as
suspected criminals, who were actually still in the United States and
could pose a threat to National security. For example, one officer
stated that a suspect under investigation was listed as having left the
country when, in fact, he had given his ticket to a family member and
was still residing in the United States. ICE agents and officers were
unable to tell us how often subjects of investigations are incorrectly
recorded as having left the country.
unintegrated systems and the lack of an exit system resulted in poor
overstay reporting and inefficient tracking
Given the unintegrated systems and the lack of a biometric
departure system, DHS cannot ensure it accurately accounts for the
total number of overstays in the country in its annual report to
Congress, known as the Entry/Exit Overstay Report. DHS completed its
first and only overstay report in 2015, listing 527,127 nonimmigrant
visitors as overstays, out of approximately 45 million visitors in
2015. However, DHS has acknowledged that this number does not reflect
the full extent of visa overstays, as it does not include individuals
who traveled to the country on student visas or anyone who crossed the
border by land from Canada or Mexico. Because of unreliable departure
data collection at these ports of entry, the Department could not
account for these potential overstays. Therefore, the report was
limited in that it only included individuals traveling to the United
States by air or sea on business travel or tourism.
The Department also could not provide assurance that all
nonimmigrants who overstayed their period of admission had been caught.
DHS's inability to accurately confirm the departures of all
nonimmigrants from the United States at the end of their authorized
admission periods prohibited ICE agents and officers from fully
accomplishing their immigration enforcement and removal Department of
Homeland Security responsibilities. ICE agents and officers arrested
only 3,402--or less than 0.4 percent--of the people who potentially
overstayed their visas in 2015.\7\
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\7\ Of the 971,305 leads sent to ICE's CCE Unit that were not
closed through automated vetting or manual closure, 3,402 arrests were
made. Of the 3,402 individuals arrested, 777 were cases sent to the
field in previous fiscal years.
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The inefficient systems and management processes contribute to case
backlogs and inefficient use of resources. ICE Homeland Security
Investigations (HSI) field personnel stated they routinely spent a
significant amount of time--several days in some instances--to manually
extract and compile data to support a decision on whether to actively
pursue a potential overstay. Working in this manner contributes to the
inability of ICE's CCE Unit to address and close a backlog of more than
1.2 million cases that were in continuous monitoring from previous
fiscal years as well as fiscal year 2015. HSI agents in the field have
also experienced increases in their workloads as the number of overstay
leads has increased by 65 percent over the last 3 years. Specifically,
the number of leads that the CCE Unit sent to HSI agents in the field
increased from 6,033 in fiscal year to 9,968 in fiscal year 2015.
Further, ICE personnel lost a significant amount of time
investigating individuals who should not have been considered
overstays. More than 40 percent of the cases sent to HSI agents in the
field were closed because the individuals had departed the country or
had applied for or received immigration benefits, such as a visa
extension. For example, 17 percent (1,649 of 9,968) of the leads sent
to HSI field agents for investigation in fiscal year were closed after
agents determined that the subjects had, in fact, already departed the
country. Another 25 percent (2,499 of 9,968) were closed upon agents
learning that the subjects had applied or been approved for immigration
benefits. In one case, an ICE officer estimated that he spent more than
50 hours on a single suspect, only to find that the individual should
not have been categorized as an overstay because he had applied for a
USCIS benefit.
conclusion
Timely identification, tracking, and adjudication of potential visa
overstays is critical to DHS's public safety and National security
mission. The Department must equip its personnel with the tools and
training required for the vital work of tracking visitors who overstay
their visas. Until DHS takes the steps needed to improve system
integration and complete its biometric exit system, efforts to track
and enforce the increasing number of visa overstays will be hindered.
We made five recommendations to the DHS CIO and ICE CIO to:
Eliminate duplication and improve information sharing across
components, and align system access according to mission
requirements;
Compile an up-to-date inventory of all IT systems across the
Department that ICE agents and officers can use for visa
tracking, and provide documented guidance on the use of each
system;
Provide necessary training to ICE personnel on IT systems
used for visa tracking;
Assess current plans to expedite the development and
implementation of the biometric exit system; and
Evaluate the extent to which data used to develop overstay
estimates is accurate and reliable, and identify how data may
be improved.
The DHS CIO and ICE CIO concurred with our recommendations.
DHS OIG will continue to exercise diligent oversight over
immigration enforcement, paying particular attention to the
Department's progress implementing a biometric exit solution.
Consistent with our obligations under the Inspector General Act of
1978, we will keep Congress fully and currently informed of our
findings and recommendations.
Ms. Chairwoman, this concludes my testimony. I am happy to answer
any questions you or other Members of the subcommittee may have.
Ms. McSally. Thank you Mr. Roth.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes for questions. I will
tell you, gentlemen, listening to your testimony it is deeply
concerning, the situation that we are in. It is troubling. It
is frustrating. It is infuriating.
I mean, this is a significant issue that we need the will
and the capability to address, right? From my view, and, you
know, I look at things often--I was a fighter pilot--we have
two main challenges.
The first is we need to make sure we have good data and
good information. We need to know who has overstayed and who
hasn't overstayed. So that is on the data front so our
situation awareness is high and we have good data.
Then the second piece is once we know who has overstayed,
what are we doing about it? How are we using your resources,
Mr. Settles, to prioritize, so that you are not wasting time
and prioritizing in order to address the issue for enforcement
with the highest priority being those that are potential
National security risks.
In both these areas, we have had significant failures and
challenges that bring us to this place of the report. We
appreciate the information in the report, but we still just
have so much more to go to address the will and the capability
in both of these areas.
We have shown, Mr. Wagner, as you said, the will in
Congress. We have funded money for a program without a plan. We
are now anxiously awaiting, you know, for the will and the
capabilities to increase in these areas.
So, Mr. Wagner, I want to start with you. On some of the
challenges you have had in the past is when we have had
biographical data focus versus biometric, it is still relying
more on the airlines and private industry to be able to give
information to something that many believe is an inherent
Governmental responsibility.
So talk to me about this facial recognition approach and
how that is actually going to be implemented? What is in the
airline industry and what is the Government doing? Then how is
that also impacting U.S. travelers?
Are we getting our facial recognition collected and then
brought somewhere into a Government database, you know, because
we are not foreign travelers? How does that all work?
Mr. Wagner. So on the manifest issue with the third-party
data, I mean, we find it is very accurate. This is data that is
collected by the airline when you check in. It is verified by
the airline when they give you your boarding pass. It is
verified by a TSA officer when you go through the checkpoint
and they compare it against your boarding pass.
It is the basis we do all of our National security checks
against, for your no-fly lists and your selectee list,
including on all your domestic travel.
Our work with it, adding biometrics to it, has found that
that data is very accurate, but, true, the vulnerability
remains of an imposter departing the United States under
somebody else's biographic data. So the biometrics are
essential to closing that vulnerability in doing it. But that
doesn't mean the data we are using today or relying on today is
inaccurate.
I mean, this is the biographic data that we caught the
Times Square bomber leaving the United States on, you know. But
if he flies out under somebody else's U.S. passport, we may not
catch him unless somebody within looks at the photograph very
closely.
So the facial recognition will allow us to lock that down
and close that vulnerability. So our plan this year--we have
already got pictures on everyone from their arrival records. I
will address your U.S. citizen comment, too.
But what we can do is, when the airline provides us that
manifest, is we will pull all of the faces that we have in the
DHS database and put them in its own secure database. When the
person goes to board the plane, it is as simple as just taking
their picture and querying against that small subset of data
you have put aside.
So this is really quick and really easy to do, and it is as
simple as putting a camera at the departure area to do this.
Now, U.S. citizens are included in that because just because
someone presents a U.S. passport, we still have to determine
they are a U.S. citizen.
We can have an officer there or an airline person there
standing and comparing the document manually, or we can use the
algorithm to make that match.
Once we confirm it is a U.S. citizen, we discard the data,
because they are not subject to the biometric exit requirement.
But we do have a responsibility to determine if a person is a
citizen and not an imposter to the passport that they are
presenting.
Ms. McSally. Does that happen automatically or manually?
Mr. Wagner. That would happen automatically with the facial
recognition software.
Ms. McSally. OK.
Mr. Wagner. We take a picture. We compare you against the
photograph you have already provided to the U.S. Government for
purposes of travel. We compare you against your passport photo
that we have from Department of State, and if you match against
that, we discard the data because you are confirmed now to be a
U.S. citizen.
So the plan for this year is to build out the back-end
services and build out the ability on a National basis to take
all of the manifests in, be able to populate the galleries and
build the database space to store this and then work on the
infrastructure to be able to match that.
So you need the space to store the data. You need to build
the services to retrieve the photos out of IDENT or OBIM's
database, stage them and create that gallery per flight.
Then you have got to procure the matchers, the algorithms
from the private-sector technology companies that build these.
You have got to implement that, and then you have to build a
protocol between the camera at the gate and getting into that
gallery to match and have a response back.
So what we are working with the--while we are building that
out, and that will take us the rest of this calendar year,
really, to build that out. Once we build that, we are working
with the airlines and the airports on their own modernization
plans because they are looking at self-boarding gates. They are
looking at facial recognition for boarding passes, for self-
tagging checked bags.
So we want to combine with them so there is not this
gauntlet of cameras you go through just to board the plane, but
it is one single photograph that we will be able to take care
of several purpose at once, including the biometric exit.
All the same data runs in the background. The fingerprints
run in the background. The biographical queries all run in the
background. You are just pointing it to the same vetting
results through matching the face instead of actually reading
the passport.
So the plan is to combine what we are doing with what the
airlines and the airports want to do and build that out over
the course of this year and into next year so we can really
leverage each other's technology and we can provide the
platform. We can provide the service.
Now, who owns the front-end piece? Once we build this
service out, it is a matter of buying cameras and plugging them
in. Our plans include looking at TSA and the checkpoint and
some possibilities to helping them with some of their work,
because you compare against the same document.
You know, looking at other services within that airport,
provided we could work through the privacy requirements of
doing so, but you should be able to match against that passport
or that visa photo all through the airport, anyplace you would
currently show an ID. Now----
Ms. McSally. So I am almost out of my time. I saw there are
no additional funds for this project in the fiscal year 2018
budget request that just came out, so do you have the funds
already from what we have allocated? What is the time line to
complete all this?
Mr. Wagner. Correct, so we have enough money this year and
next year to get the platform built and get this started. We
will be demonstrating six to eight sites, up to maybe a dozen
sites this summer, to show the stakeholders how it works and
start to work on their own modernization plans to fit it.
So this year we will be building out that back-end service,
that platform, stage those photos, procure the space and
procure the algorithms to do the matching. We think there is
enough money there to do the complete air environment starting
this year into next year.
Land border is a different challenge, so----
Ms. McSally. Got it. OK, so we will circle back afterwards.
I am out of time, but I do want to know the full time line and
the full cost for air and sea for this to roll out.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Vela for 5 minutes.
Mr. Vela. Oh, Mr. Roth, I want to make sure that I
understand your testimony and subsequently I am curious as to
what the Department's feelings are about it because before you
began your testimony, I assumed that the 739,000 figure that we
had for 2016 would be precise.
But as I understand your testimony, you are suggesting that
that is not likely so. Is that right?
Mr. Roth. That is correct, and I can explain why. There are
a couple areas in which inaccuracies get injected into the
system. With all respect to Officer Wagner, I think that the
airlines do an OK job with regard to providing passenger
manifests.
But during our audit we found that that accuracy rate was
in the low 90 percents, somewhere between 92 percent and 95
percent. It seems pretty good except if you are talking about
50 million people, 5 percent of 50 million is still a
significant number of people.
The other thing that the report, and it is very up-front,
it acknowledges the fact that it does not include the land
border, which obviously is a significant issue. This year, of
course, they included students, which they hadn't last year so
we commend them for gradually increasing the accuracy.
But I think when we are talking about this level of numbers
of travelers there are going to be inaccuracies here. What we
found, for example, is the cases that got shipped to Homeland
Security Investigations for overstays, and these were the high-
priority cases, 40 percent of them either already got some sort
of immigration benefit or had left the country.
In other words, we thought that they were overstays and
then once they got investigated they weren't overstays. So
there is going to be a significant amount of inaccuracy in
these kinds of numbers.
Mr. Vela. So are you saying that that figure is probably
about 90 percent accurate or----
Mr. Roth. That is the problem is we can't tell exactly how
accurate it is, and that is the whole nature of the problem. As
I said, once we took a look at the accuracy of the numbers that
we got from the airlines, we saw that that was somewhere in the
low 90 percent accuracy rate. But again, that is an estimate.
We can't estimate what kind of volume we are talking about
at the southern land border, for example, or the northern land
border, excluding Canadians, who will not share that
information. So again, there is a lot we don't know, so I would
caution or I would exercise some caution believing the
accuracy, the specific accuracy of these numbers.
Mr. Vela. So Chief Wagner, what are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Wagner. So the report didn't include the airline
manifest data or how it was accounted for or received from the
airlines, so I don't know how the 90 percent figure was
calculated. That really wasn't in our report.
What I did see in the report was some ICE agent case data
from fiscal year 2015, but there was no indication of how old
or stale that data was. Were those cases from 2015 or 2014 or
2013? So it is hard, really, to say about the accuracies of
that data without having the analysis of what actual data was
received and how it was calculated, other than some, you know,
anecdotal statements from the ICE agents about how complicated
it was.
So there was a lot of summaries, judgments made based on
anecdotal information. I really didn't see the data analysis
behind it.
Now, as far as the land border goes, sure, you know, 250
million land border travelers last year, but once you take out
the Mexican citizens and the Canadian citizens the numbers are
very small. You know, out of 190 million, and this is on
arrivals, land border travelers last year, just over 400,000
were non-Mexican citizens and not American citizens, very small
number.
On the Northern Border, out of 60 million travelers, there
were about 1.1 million non-Canadian, non-U.S. travelers. So we
think this is a manageable subset to start with. You know, we
think there are manual reporting requirements we can put in for
that same population if they depart the land border, you know,
as their final departure from the United States.
You know, those numbers will be even smaller than these
numbers because these include the--workers and the people that
cross back and forth to, we will call them, you know, third-
country nationals at this point.
So we think that is a manageable subset, but true. A lot
more people cross the land borders but it is a lot of, as you
know, it is the commuting traffic. It is a lot of local
community going back and forth who wouldn't be subject to
biometric exit anyway.
Mr. Vela. Thank you.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Barletta for 5
minutes.
Mr. Barletta. Thank you.
Mr. Wagner, for years, you know, I have been calling for
the Congress and the administration to follow through on one of
the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission report to
complete a biometric entry-exit screening system, which they
called ``an essential investment in our security.''
As noted earlier, as many as four of the nine hijackers
violated the terms of their visas and/or overstayed. We have
seen this pattern continue in other terrorist plots.
Biometric entry-exit means collecting biometrics on entry
and exit at land, air, and sea. One gaping hole in the plans we
have heard about today is land ports of entry where about two-
thirds of travelers pass through.
Can you please speak to plans to collect biometric entry
data at land ports of entry? Why aren't we verifying the
identity of land arrivals biometrically?
Mr. Wagner. So land arrivals are collected biometrically
when someone leaves that border zone on the Southwest Border
or, you know, Canadian citizens on the Northern Border are not
subject to the biometric collection. So any third-country
national coming across the Canadian border we would collect the
biometrics.
On the Southern Border, it is any Mexican citizen that
wants to proceed past the border zone, which is different miles
in different States, and then any third country nationals that
would come in.
I gave you the numbers on the third-country nationals on
the Mexican border. For Mexican citizens, you know, it is just
over 15 million last year, so it is a pretty significant
number, but all of them come in, have their biometrics
verified. They have already been taken by State Department when
they got the visa. We verify who it is.
So the plans on departure would be start with the third-
country nationals and it is a very manageable group. Set up a
manual reporting requirement for them. Have them come in and
give us their biometrics and we confirm them.
The premise of technology in the vehicle lanes, there is
just nothing yet, so we are testing some cameras that can do
facial recognition in through a vehicle. We haven't seen
anything that is commercially available yet, but for
pedestrians I think we can do that using the same system we are
building for airports.
Mr. Barletta. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Dougherty, it is good to see an updated visa overstay
report, which was more complete than the one issued last year.
That being said, it is noted that this report does not cover
all foreign visitors to the United States, such as those that
enter through the land ports of entry.
It also does not provide the total estimated in-country
overstay population that are here now. It is a snapshot of time
of those foreign visitors who are expected to depart in fiscal
year 2016 and those who did not do so.
How do you plan to use the information in the new overstay
report? What do you think is the most effective way to address
the problem of overstays?
Mr. Dougherty. I personally think that a better means of
communicating with people who are here on visas should be
explored. I think we are doing that now. I think CBP is looking
toward pushing something out on your phone that says, hey, you
are almost done. I think it would be nice if the sending
countries would do the same thing.
I know if I was on travel and the host country was telling
me that it was about time to go, and my own Government was
telling me the same, that would motivate me to get going.
I think that in terms of compliance and getting people to
voluntarily leave, if their intention is to come here and
overstay we need to do a better job of understanding whether or
not that is their intention on the front end. So if we are
going to be doing screening and vetting in a more sort of
robust fashion, how does that translate into real life?
I think part of it is going to be probably increasing
training for those individuals who actually do interview people
who are intending to come to the United States to better
understand their intent.
That is, as I mentioned in my opening statement, part of
the Executive Order is that the interagencies getting together
and looking at whether or not we can do a better job of
determining intent and perhaps denying admission to those
people who would intend to overstay.
So we have got in a sense a little bit of a carrot,
perhaps, with notifying people, hey, you are almost done. But
then there is the stick, which is we can't let you in because
basically I cannot determine based on the colloquy that you and
I are having right now that you are not going to the United
States under whatever visa category, that you don't intend to
just overstay.
Mr. Barletta. OK.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. McSally. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Demings from Florida, for 5
minutes.
Mrs. Demings. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Wagner, you talked about the operational model in
Atlanta and the plans for further buildout at 6 to 10, I
believe, additional airports. What portion of the process are
the stakeholders, the airports, the airlines willing to own and
what portions will be CBP's?
Mr. Wagner. So CBP will receive the airline manifest
information about who checks in for a flight just as we do
today. We will build a gallery of photographs based on the
holdings, the data we have already got from people's arrival
information where we took their picture.
We will stage that in a gallery in a secure computer
database. We will procure a matching algorithm to be able to
match a received photograph against that gallery. Now, who owns
that front-end camera and who takes that picture? I think that
could be--the Government could do that or the airline could do
that.
Mrs. Demings. What about cost-wise?
Mr. Wagner. The cost of the cameras would really be the
inexpensive part of this. The cost would be the personnel.
Now, CBP has to staff each one of the 5,000 departure gates
at all the airports or look at restricting departures to only
locations we could staff.
Mrs. Demings. How many additional personnel or officers,
personnel, would you need to implement the program Nationally,
roughly?
Mr. Wagner. That would be thousands. That would be
thousands of officers to do that or pull them from the inbound
lanes, but creating additional delays there.
So if the airlines are already going through a boarding
process and verifying passports manually, because that is what
a lot of the gate agents do now is they have to look at that
passport, because wherever they are going that country also
holds them to board the right person.
If we can help the airline with that requirement and
confirm their identity based on our records, it helps the
airlines with their resources. So we want to build a platform
that if an airline is looking at modernizing and doing facial
recognition, which we are in talks with an airline right now
about doing that for a boarding pass.
Well, why not link them up and just have one camera, one
picture of the traveler taken that provides both benefits,
boarding the plane and doing the biometric exit so that the
traveler wouldn't have to go through two cameras and having a
CBP officer standing there doing what the airline person is
doing.
So should the airlines choose to do that, we want to build
a platform that could accept their technology and allow them to
do that. If not, the Government could procure that, but then
the cost will go up. But then the resources and the manpower to
do that would be astronomical.
Mrs. Demings. OK, thank you.
Mr. Dougherty, how does the Department ensure that DHS
field personnel are adequately trained to identify and
investigate incidents of individuals who may be in the country
longer than the term of their visas?
Mr. Dougherty. Ma'am, I would defer a portion of that
question to my colleagues within ICE to answer. I do want to
address one thing if I could regarding Secretary Kelly's
interest in bringing on many new ICE officers.
As a former Marine general he is very interested in the
ground troops. He is very interested in the quality of their
life, the equipment that they get and principally in the
training that they get as well. So his objective is to add as
many folks as we can while keeping a high quality of recruits
coming into ICE to assist as ICE agents, the number that has
been placed out in public is 10,000 people over time.
So his intention there would be to ensure that they were
very, very well-trained. He believes in professionalism and it
is a strong characteristic of his personality. The remainder of
your question, if I could, I would defer to Mr. Settles.
Mrs. Demings. Mr. Settles.
Mr. Settles. Yes, thank you. I guess from looking at the
report it is kind of a two-part question. One is training in
the systems and then the other part is training on how to
conduct the investigations. I know that, you know, the main DHS
and ICE CIOs came forward with a plan on the system training
that is supposed to be implemented by, I believe, April 30,
2018. It was, you know, concurred with by OIG.
On the other side, like I mentioned, when I took over this
job and I saw that there were some agents out there, and again,
I know there may be new agents, and these are difficult cases.
I mean, the people don't want to be found, especially if they
came here, you know, to hurt us, for National security or
public safety concerns, or if they just ended up overstaying
their visa, they are not going to make it easy for us.
So just like any criminal investigation, you know, some of
them we can adjudicate in a few hours, some of them take a long
time because the people just don't want to be found and then we
have to go through it.
As far as the number of systems, we do have work to do.
There is no doubt about it. I will say we have come a long
ways, though, from the days I can remember of the systems that
I used when I was a field agent and how you had to type in
these long strings of almost DOS-like codes in order to be able
to search things like criminal records.
We are moving in our lead track, which is the CTCEU. We
have already moved to it being a single sign-on and person-
centric, which is very important because it allows us to look
at everything that that person did, not just the event or the
visa that they filed.
But, you know, we are going to--we have already sent out
the handbook. It seemed like there was some confusion that
there was at least one agent that didn't, you know, understand
how to do these. The handbook gives detailed information.
The leads we actually send out, the reports of
investigation, says it is about 130 employees that, you know, I
have here and in the National capital region that ingest these
leads, the 1.2 million leads. After the automated screening
then they go through, you know, and check all of the systems
manually.
Part of the reason they do that is because, I mean, the
system is only as good as the information you put in it. Part
of that is to amplify the information, make it better and make
connections that the technology can't do yet, you know, along
the lines of looking through a system and finding a speeding
ticket and seeing that it adds another, you know, another
address.
Right now you are going to have to log on to a different
system in order to be able to do that because there are
concerns of third agency and privacy and other things. So there
is always going to be a lot of systems. I mean, I think that is
why these guys and gals get paid as----
Mrs. Demings. OK. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Rutherford from
Florida, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Settles, in Mr. Roth's numbers, and again this kind of
goes back to the issue we were just talking about, it says 0.4
percent of the overstays were actually arrested. Now, that is
3,402. That is obviously a pretty small number.
To kind-of follow up where you were at, and I want to ask
just a couple of brief questions. No. 1, do they log into NCCIC
and look for these overstays being in jails throughout the
country?
Mr. Settles. Yes, sir, they do. Also the sister agency to
HSI, ERO has a program that goes around to the jails and, you
know, puts detainers on individuals----
Mr. Rutherford. OK.
Mr. Settles [continuing]. That are within the jails.
Mr. Rutherford. When Mr. Wagner builds out the facial
recognition program, is there a way for 287(g) agencies to
actually tap into that and let you know instead of--because if
you check NCCIC today they may not be in there. They may be in
there tomorrow, though. So unless you are continuously checking
you are really missing the boat.
But if we had those agencies out there helping you hit a
database of overstays, then we identify them for you and tell
you come pick them up. That way we have thousands of officers
all over the country helping to capture this population.
So my question is when this database becomes available,
will you have to be a 287(g) agency to get into that database
or can some other structure be put up like through the fusion
centers or something like that?
Mr. Settles. You know, I don't know the answer to that yet
because we are not there to that point yet, but I think it is a
great idea. I mean, it would be very helpful for us for the
departments that want to work with us to be able to run that
information and send it back to us.
It would also be helpful when the technology comes on-line
to where it can continually search and you don't have to go in
there every day, like you said, and rerun the name when the
technology comes on-line. That we just put it in there once
and, you know, it is out there looking.
Mr. Rutherford. Mr. Wagner.
Mr. Wagner. But that database already exists. That exists
today. We have collected the biometrics, the fingerprints, the
photographs of every, you know, non-citizen that has arrived in
the United States with the exception of Canadian citizens. So
that is already there.
All we are building with this is when the airline tells us
who to expect to fly, because that database is 200 million
identities.
Mr. Rutherford. Yes.
Mr. Wagner. Probably a billion photographs. So it is
difficult just to send a picture in and say who is this or send
your fingerprints in and say who is this? You have got to read
the passport first to find it, right, because the databases are
too big the way they have been architected over time.
What we will do is when we get the airline manifests is we
go and pull all those biometrics out and just stage it
somewhere so you have a very small file you are searching
against. If they're not found in that file then we start over
and start to look, OK, who is this person really?
But I think a lot of those capabilities already exist to
run fingerprints and to run photographs into that main
database, which is run by DHS's OBIM's office to do that.
Mr. Rutherford. But again I go back to the question, same
question I had for Mr. Settles. If the officers aren't
accessing those databases every day, those databases are
changing every day as far as arrests. Who is in our jails? Do
local jails have access to that database?
Mr. Wagner. I don't exactly know, but what we will do is we
will run a lot of recurrent vetting or perpetual vetting
against the databases that we have. So we take State
Department's visa database and every day we run that against
new information.
We take the visa waiver travelers----
Mr. Rutherford. OK.
Mr. Wagner [continuing]. Who has been given an ESTA. We run
that all the time against new pieces of information.
If the TSDB, the terrorism watch list gets a new entry, we
get that and we run it against all our holdings to see do we
know this person? Does the U.S. Government have any info on
this person?
Mr. Rutherford. OK.
Mr. Wagner. Do they have a visa? Are they in the country?
Are they out of the country or are they an overstay? So if when
we receive that information at our National targeting center
and we see that person has a visa, we look to see have they
traveled to the United States and are they here?
If they are here, we are passing it off to ICE to say here
is a----
Mr. Rutherford. Right.
Mr. Wagner [continuing]. TSDB hit. The person is still in
the country. We will also call State Department and have that
visa canceled----
Mr. Rutherford. So let me ask you one other question, too,
because I know sometimes the numbers that aren't included are
as important as the ones that are. The 0.4 percent is those
overstays that were actually arrested.
Do you have a clearance number for your agents, Mr.
Settles? I think, who even though they only arrest 0.4 percent,
how many of the overstay cases they investigate do they
actually clear either by arrest or especially clear because
they find out they are out of the country or, you know, they
passed away or, you know, whatever the exceptional
circumstances might be?
Mr. Settles. Yes, I mean, again, so when they come in to us
we are looking for that derogatory information and for National
security and public safety. The ones that don't meet our
criteria we send to ERO. That is about 679,000.
Mr. Rutherford. Yes.
Mr. Settles. Of the leads that come into us, then we do the
manual vetting and we close about 350,000 because, again, like
we talked about, this is a snapshot in time.
Mr. Rutherford. Right.
Mr. Settles. People are coming and going every day.
Ms. McSally. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Rutherford. Yes, I----
Ms. McSally. Can we follow up in a second round?
Mr. Rutherford. Yes, I just didn't want to leave the
impression that you only know about 3,400. You know a lot more
than that.
Mr. Settles. Yes, sir.
Mr. Rutherford. Thank you.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes Ms. Barragan from
California.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you.
Mr. Roth. I want to go back to you about this issue of
whether the numbers we have are accurate or not. Can you tell
us the numbers that we are given, what is the basis on you
saying they are not accurate?
Mr. Roth. Excuse me. Yes, you know, we do this audit and we
talk to CBP so the numbers that I gave you are cited in our
report. Those are numbers that CBP themselves gave us, the low
90 percent to 94 percent accuracy rate of the passenger
manifests that they get, CBP itself says is between 90 percent
and 94 percent accurate.
We put that in our report. We give it to CBP. CBP has an
opportunity to object to that, say it is not accurate. They did
not object to that. This was referenced by our auditors.
According to Government auditing standards we believe that
that is an accurate number of people who are either
underreported, meaning they have not left even though the
airline records show that they have left or overreported,
meaning that the airlines failed to show that they left.
So either way, it is a problem for our visa overstay issue.
Now, that is corroborated by the fact that when we went out to
the field and we talked to the ICE agents, the folks who were
actually--the HSI agents who are actually doing the work, they
found that a lot of their cases, in fact, were people who had
left the country. It was like 17 percent of their caseload.
So we have it both ways, both from CBP data that CBP itself
gave us, as well as from, you know, anecdotally from HSI agents
who say, hey, you know, the data that you have given us, these
files that you are giving us are bad. So that is how we can
tell.
This is through no fault of either CBP or ICE or DHS that
this happens. This is the law of large numbers. When you are
talking about 50 million people at, you know, a number of
different ports, these kinds of errors are going to happen.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you. Do we know how long--you said that
there are times where you go to the investigators and they
start to investigate and they realize that there is no
overstay. Do we know how often that happens and how much time
we waste in doing that or how far along in the process we find
that out?
Mr. Roth. We looked at that in our audit report and for
fiscal 2015, which is the year that our audit looked at, it was
a 40 percent rate. So about 25 percent were individuals who had
received some sort of immigration benefit, so they weren't, in
fact, overstaying. They were complying with the immigration
law. The remainder were out of the country by the time the HSI
agents received that. That is the data that we compiled based
on our audit looking at HSI data.
Ms. Barragan. Mr. Settles, do you know what the timing is
like on, let's say somebody overstays their visa, when ICE
would actually get this report that there is an overstay? Does
it take weeks? Does it take months? Is it a year?
Mr. Settles. It used to take weeks and now we have reduced
it down to about 3 to 5 days because you remember it has got to
come in and be automated, vetted, you know, on an automated and
a manual process to both intelligence holdings and, you know,
like we have said quite a few other databases currently.
Then we package it up and send it out to the field. So we
cut it down from 2 to 3 weeks to 3 to 5 days, which has been a
significant achievement.
Ms. Barragan. I guess my concern has been, you know, you
hear about the reports of the 9/11 attackers or people who have
overstayed their visa--I mean--makes this a critical issue that
we need to actually invest dollars in as opposed to a wall per
se.
Once you get that list, I imagine there are a lot of people
on that list. How are you going to determine who is a priority?
Do you look at people coming from certain countries? Do you
look at, you know, how long they have overstayed their visa?
What is the process?
Mr. Settles. So we get about 3,000 leads a day that comes
into us either from CBP or from SEVIS and other sources. We
chair this board called the Compliance Enforcement Advisory
Board or the CEAB, and that has other law enforcement agencies
like FBI, CBP, other agencies in the intelligence community and
they help us set a ten-tiered priority matrix that we bounce
that off.
Tier 1 are the people that we know they are some type of
National security or derogatory information. The other tiers
could be because of travel patterns of concern, countries of
concern.
One of the things that after looking at both the overstay
report and the OIG report that we are going to take, I have
asked my team to take to this Compliance Enforcement Advisory
Board is, you know, maybe looking at countries adding in that
have a very high rate of overstay as another factor.
But we bounce it off of those and that gives us a
prioritized list and then that is what we send out first. We
continue to monitor the other, but it, I mean, if you don't
mind me saying, it really is--and for the HSI side it is a
resource issue because our agents are doing other things.
They are investigating child exploitation where there is
actually a victim. You know, we have to prioritize those things
that we get information that a drug load is coming in that day.
Now, I am not saying that if we knew that an overstay lead
had anything to do with National security or something that was
more important, you know, but if it is a fraud case that we
have in an overstay and the agent, you know, is needing to go
out and rescue a child victim we are going to prioritize that.
So I mean, that is kind of the different layers of how we
get down to prioritizing, but what I can tell you is----
Ms. Barragan. Thank you.
Mr. Settles [continuing]. We have sent out more leads
already this year than we did all of last year because that
ten-tiered system, because we are no longer excluding any
classes of aliens, we are looking at all 10 tiers again.
Ms. Barragan. OK, thank you so much.
I yield back.
Ms. McSally. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Rogers from
Alabama.
Mr. Rogers. Thank the Chair.
Mr. Settles, we know in 2016 that more illegal aliens
stayed in the United States on visa overstays than were caught
at the Southern Border. Is it just employment that is drawing
them? Is that what you are finding? Or what is making that
happen?
Mr. Settles. Sir, that is a really hard question for me to
answer. I mean, I think I would be giving you my opinion.
Mr. Rogers. That is what I am looking for.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Rogers. I hope it is an informed opinion.
Mr. Settles. Well, I would rather get back to you on that
if I could? I think I would just be speculating. I want to work
with my team and maybe give you a, you know, a more informed
answer.
Mr. Rogers. OK. When these individuals are caught and
removed are exit interviews done? Are they debriefed?
Mr. Settles. That does occur, especially if they are
somebody that is of concern. We are gonna work with ERO and we
are going to talk with them, try to find out information and
that is what criminal investigators do.
Mr. Rogers. I mean, every overstay is a concern. So I would
hope that when we do apprehend somebody who has overstayed and
we remove them that somebody is asking them a few questions
before we send them out home.
Mr. Settles. Absolutely, I mean, that is part of presenting
the case. If it is a criminal case we are going to have to have
interviewed them and we are going to have to, you know, produce
evidence. The same if it is an administrative arrest and we are
taking them in front of an immigration judge.
Mr. Rogers. OK. It seems staying in the United States on an
expired visa is the lowest risk and highest rewards way to live
in the United States illegally. I think one way to make illegal
labor less profitable and less appealing is to put a fee on
money sent back to their home country by these illegal workers.
I have introduced a bill to do that, tax remittances or put a
fee on remittances.
But other than that, what current legal mechanism do you
have in ICE or CBP that can reduce the appeal of overstays? I
know you talked a little while ago, Mr. Dougherty, about the
interviews that you could do on the front end, but what legal
mechanisms do you have to really chill their enthusiasm for
coming over here and overstaying?
Mr. Dougherty. Well, I will touch on it briefly and then I
can pass it to my colleague with CBP. But, I mean, depending on
how long they overstay that makes them ineligible for applying
or getting a visa again. It could be 3 years or 10 years.
It also limits their ability to apply for a visa anywhere
other than their home country, which can be really difficult.
So there are mechanisms, and then they face detention, you
know, removal, so----
Mr. Rogers. But not in this country they hadn't been. My
recollection is from about 10 or 11 years ago that when folks
come here on these visas, particularly if it is a temporary
work visa or a student visa that they are issued a Social
Security card. Is that still the practice?
Mr. Settles. I can't--that happens in some cases. People
are able to get Social Security cards, but it is an individual
and I think it has to do with--I would just rather get back to
you on that answer, if I could?
Mr. Rogers. If you would? My recollection is that we
require it if they are going to be here as a student or working
that they have to get a Social Security I.D. number. So if you
would check to see if that is still the case and get back with
me I would appreciate that.
Mr. Settles. Yes, sir.
Mr. Rogers. With that I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. McSally. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Correa from California.
Mr. Correa. Thank you, Madam Chair. My apologies for
running a little bit late. I was caught up on the floor, but I
am going to ask a question that hasn't been asked before.
People come in on temporary visas from Mexico. When you
return you are not actually required to collect them at the
border? Is that correct? Or is it a process to collet those?
Mr. Wagner. They are provided a paper I-94 if they cross
through the land border.
Mr. Correa. That is correct.
Mr. Wagner. They are supposed to hand that back in at the
end of their stay, but they are multiple entries so they can
use them for multiple entries and not hand it in.
Mr. Correa. So how do you account in terms of guesstimating
folks that are still here versus those that are not given that
they may be handed in versus not returned when they exit the
country?
Mr. Wagner. So with the land border what we look at is what
we call subsequent arrivals. So if someone has a border
crossing card, a Mexican citizen with a visa----
Mr. Correa. Yes.
Mr. Wagner [continuing]. You know, 85 percent of those
travelers cross the border again within 30 days.
Mr. Correa. OK.
Mr. Wagner. Obviously they left if they can cross again. If
you push that out to 6 months, 95 percent of them cross again
within 180 days. So right now that is the best indicator we
have of what percentage might be overstaying or not crossing
the border again.
Mr. Correa. So you have got essentially a guesstimate, a
algorithm, so to speak, to try to guesstimate how many folks
actually are returning and how many are not.
Mr. Wagner. True because we do not have the exit collection
process on the land border.
Mr. Correa. OK. Any thoughts on a collection process? I
guess an even more important question is how important is it to
really have that, you know, collection process? Are we going
after an issue that is significant?
I say that to you because I have had many relatives that I
go pick them up at Tijuana. They get the permit, come over, and
when you exit there is nobody really there to take the card. It
is really an issue or not to me because, you know, other than I
tell them, you know, let's find somebody to give this card to,
otherwise you may be accused of overstaying your time here.
So the question is, is it really an issue? No. 2, if it is
an issue are we going to move forward to create a process to
collect these cards?
Mr. Wagner. Correct, so we don't have the infrastructure or
the personnel there to do that to the extent that we do in-
bound. You know, there are not facilities built. There is not
infrastructure. It was never designed to control the
departures.
You know, we can do enforcement work and we can do targeted
examinations of people, but to do it on a wholesale process,
you know, we are not equipped or built to do that.
There is some work with perhaps the Mexican government we
can do about exchanging information that we are discussing with
the Mexican government in Tijuana about potentially looking at
pedestrians and exchanging some of the information, similar to
what we have done with Canada. That an entry into Canada can
serve as a departure record from the United States.
We are exchanging non-Canadian data with that right now for
the third-country nationals. So I think there are possibilities
to help Mexico build out their infrastructure to do that, or
the U.S. Government can build it on our side. But again, there
is no infrastructure there now or personnel to do that.
Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Wagner. I was just going to say
that that is an excellent idea given the cost of the
infrastructure and the fact that on both sides of the border
you are having a lot of infrastructure being built right now.
I believe occasionally when you do cross the border into
Mexico, the Mexican authorities do check you out to see who you
are and what you have got in your car and so on and so forth.
So I encourage you to continue to try to seek some similar
relationships, cooperation as we have with Canada with Mexico.
I think that is a win-win strategy.
Thank you very much, and with that, Madam, I yield the
remainder of my time.
Ms. McSally. The gentleman yields back.
We are going to start a second round, and I now recognize
myself for 5 minutes.
I want to follow up on the carrots and sticks related to
trying to change some of the behavior here. When we look at the
penalties that could be a potential deterrent, if you could
stay 364 days and that only means that once you are told to
leave or if you leave on your own you just can't come back for
3 years.
If you stay a little bit longer you can't come back for 10
years. Coming over the land border illegally a second time is a
felony. Do you feel, Mr. Wagner, that the penalties are
appropriate to deter this action? Then second, as I look at
some of these charts I think about, like, carrots and sticks to
countries.
I mean, we have some countries on here that have rates of
75.21 percent overstays, from Eritrea. Let us see, and some of
them are in the high 20's and the 40's, 56.86 for Afghanistan,
67 percent from Liberia.
I mean, if 77 percent of the individuals that are given a
visa are overstaying, are we coordinating with the State
Department to have some country-specific sticks in order to
deter continuing behavior like this, because obviously it is
not working?
Mr. Wagner. Yes, so we have provided the overstay report to
the Department of State. We have, you know, had that discussion
with them. I know they have shared it with their posts, those
kinds of numbers.
I know we have shared it with our field locations that, you
know, these are the countries that have very high overstay
rates, so, you know, scrutinize travelers with those passports
a little closer with that in mind that they have very high
overstay rates.
Ms. McSally. But, I mean, there is no--obviously the State
Department is not here, but there needs to be other tools, from
my view, of, like, hey, country X, get your act together. Or
you are no longer going to be granted visas because if you are
having a 70-plus percent overstay rate, I mean, there has got
to be some sort of carrot.
There are other diplomatic and economic tools for them to
actually tighten up their process at the country level? How are
the individual penalties? What do you think about the
individual penalties?
Mr. Wagner. I mean, we enforce them as the legislation
permits. I mean, to----
Ms. McSally. Right. No, I know. I am just asking----
Mr. Wagner [continuing]. The fullest extent that we can.
Ms. McSally [continuing]. If you think it is an appropriate
deterrent or if anybody has got any thoughts on that? Obviously
with 700,000-plus people blowing them off, you know, perhaps we
need to be looking into that here to tighten those up.
Mr. Settles, I want to talk about resources. You said you
don't have adequate resources. How many HSI agents are there
total and how many are focused on visa overstays, what subset?
Mr. Settles. Thank you. The numbers change and we are
trying to hire. We have about 6,500 agents. For the last few
years we have dedicated I think somewhere between 600,000 and
700,000 hours toward overstay enforcement, if that gives you--
because that is how we measure.
Ms. McSally. How is that as a percentage of total man-
hours? I am just trying to get a sense of percentage of effort.
Mr. Settles. I would have to take it back. I think it is--
--
Ms. McSally. OK.
Mr. Settles [continuing]. Around 3 percent.
Ms. McSally. OK. So I am hearing that you feel you need
additional agents and resources to be able to adequately
enforce this and prioritize it.
Mr. Settles. Well, yes, ma'am. I mean, obviously with more
we could do more. I mean, but I would say that we are currently
going through a, you know, a big hiring push, which is very
good for us. That is something we are working on right now.
We have a task force. We are doing these super one-stops,
you know, where the potential agent candidates come in and it
is almost like the military back when they had, you know, when
you were called up for the draft.
You go through each phase all at the same time from an
interview and a physical and doing the physical fit test. That
moves us along a lot quicker, so we are doing those throughout
the country.
Ms. McSally. Thanks. I yield back.
The Chair--you have a second round? OK, anybody else?
Mr. Correa?
Ms. Barragan? OK.
Ms. Barragan. Yes, I would like to go back to Mr. Settles.
You had mentioned that you have a 10-tier system. You said you
are now looking at all 10 tiers. Give me an example of what is
at the 10th tier?
Mr. Settles. I don't have it specifically in front of me,
but it may be an individual from a country that has some level
of concern but not as high because of travel patterns where we
have identified that people have traveled for foreign fighters.
Ms. Barragan. OK.
Mr. Settles. Then other criteria like age and----
Ms. Barragan. You say you are now looking at all 10 tiers.
Does that mean because there are no longer priorities set in
the Department and they have been expanded? Or why is it that
you are now looking at all 10 tiers?
Mr. Settles. Yes, ma'am, that is correct because we are no
longer excluding any classes of individuals. Our guidance now
is to enforce the law across the books.
Ms. Barragan. Well, it sounds like you have a resource
issue and now without the priorities it is making it even
harder for your Department. Is that accurate?
Mr. Settles. Yes and no. I mean, we have already sent out
more leads than we did last year, which is a very good thing.
But I would say the year before we had sent out almost twice as
many leads and the subsequent years as well.
So it creates a resource issue and we are hiring more
people. But it also, I think, because again, that whole 10-tier
and working in coordination with other agencies like the FBI
and the intelligence community to figure out the people and the
travel patterns that would be most likely to be of concern to
us.
Ms. Barragan. So how do we know then if you are looking at
all 10 tiers, let's say you are working on somebody who is in
the ninth tier. That means that somebody in the first tier may
not be addressed basically because somebody is working on that
ninth-tier person.
Mr. Settles. No, I mean, every day we are prioritizing and
triaging and moving and so, you know, priority one through
fours we are going to get to before we get to the ninth. Like I
say, we get about 3,000 leads a day and we have about 130
agents and analysts crunching through them as fast as they can.
Ms. Barragan. There, you know, all the reports about there
are going to be 10,000 new ICE agents hired. Do we know how
many of those will be allocated to overstays?
Mr. Settles. I do not have any visibility on that, no. I
think like most of our priorities we have quite a few that
will, you know, it will move back and forth depending on
whatever the threat is at the time.
Ms. Barragan. OK. There was also my understanding was that
the OIG report indicated that some of the investigators were
not properly trained to access the systems. Why is it they were
not properly trained?
Mr. Settles. Well, I guess what I would say is, like I
mentioned in my oral testimony, I mean, that is of concern to
me as well. If even one agent feels that way that is not
acceptable. So we are taking steps to change that.
But I can say I ran 10 field offices in northern California
and I just finished running seven in Virginia and the District
of Columbia, and I never had that complaint from any of the
agents in those offices that they didn't feel they were
trained.
But they did sometimes feel like, you know, rightfully so,
I think we all feel like we have a lot of passwords and we have
a lot of different systems that we have to navigate.
If you don't do them every day--so if you are a, you know,
if you are somebody that works in child exploitation or money
laundering or drug smuggling or weapons smuggling and you are
taking up some leads in this area and there are some databases
with USCIS that you haven't used before or only use a couple
times a year, you know, we would love for the technology to get
to a single sign-on, you know, across the board.
You know and Federated searches. But so I think--does that
answer your question?
Ms. Barragan. Yes. Thank you.
Mr. Wagner. if I may, what is CBP doing to ensure the
servers and the data, the biometrics data, is not compromised
under a cyber attack?
Mr. Wagner. So, I mean, I would have to defer to our I.T.
staff to provide the, you know, the technical answer on that.
But, you know, the data is housed within a CBP system. We will
be using some cloud space technology to store that data, but
what we will do is what is called templatizing the photographs.
So it takes your picture, it turns it into basically ones
and zeroes and numbers. That is put into the cloud space where
the matching occurs. So if somebody were to hack that all they
would get was just a bunch of numbers.
When that match is made the data comes back into the CBP
database then where it is secured.
Ms. Barragan. All right, thank you.
I yield back.
Ms. McSally. Thanks. One last question, Mr. Wagner, and I
started it at the end of my first round, which is you said you
had enough funding for what you are planning to do for the
remainder of fiscal year 2017 and 2018. Do we have a sense of
what the total cost of the facial recognition to be rolled out
to all land--sorry, air and sea ports and the time line? Should
we expect to get a plan on how that is all going to happen from
CBP?
Mr. Wagner. So we believe there is enough funding there now
to do the facial recognition at the air and sea locations.
Ms. McSally. At all?
Mr. Wagner. All of it----
Ms. McSally. OK.
Mr. Wagner [continuing]. Over, you know. Now, depending on
how the final deployment goes and what some of the stakeholders
take on or provide versus what the Government will provide, if
CBP has to provide staff at each one of the 5,000 departure
gates, that funding would not be enough.
If we can work with TSA and consolidate some of the
adjudication of the mismatches in a centralized place, maybe
that is an easier way to do it then partnering with the
airlines with the final confirmation at the gate. That brings
the staffing cost way down dramatically.
So there is still a lot of work to do on that on exactly
how that would be deployed. So, you know, we will have to
follow up with you as this progresses and to see what the
funding will cover. The idea is, of course, spend as little of
the funding as possible and make that money work for what we
have to do.
Ms. McSally. Great, thank you. I want to thank the
witnesses for your valuable testimony on this very important
topic. I want to thank the Members for their questions.
Members of the committee may have some additional questions
for the witnesses. I will ask you to respond to these in
writing. Pursuant to committee rule VII(D) the hearing record
will be open for 10 days.
Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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