Login | Register

• Print this |
• Email this
• Digg
• De.licio.us
• Slashdot
• Technorati

Image: Zaid Hamid

BACK HOME: US-VISIT staff members provide data to the Coast Guard.

Project at a Glance

WHAT: The Coast Guard and the Homeland Security Department’s U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program.

MISSION: Bring mobile biometric identification capabilities to Coast Guard ships in the Mona Passage near Purto Rico and connect remotely to US-VISIT’s fingerprint database.

CHALLENGE: The Coast Guard had no way of knowing whether undocumented migrants had criminal records, so the migrants were simply repatriated, only to reappear multiple times.

SOLUTION: The Coast Guard collects fingerprints and photographs from each migrant using handheld scanners that can withstand adverse weather conditions and the constant movement of the ship. The data is sent to US-VISIT via e-mail, where it is compared with all of the records in the US-VISIT database. The results are returned within two minutes.

IMPACT: Migrants with criminal histories are being detained and prosecuted instead of repeatedly shuttled back to their native countries. Based on the fingerprints collected to date, 9 percent of the fingerprint matches to US-VISIT’s database are convicted felons, and 20 percent have orders of deportation barring them from entering the United States. What’s more, interdictions in the Mona Passage are down 50 percent in 2007 compared to the year-to-date in 2006. COST: The Coast Guard spent $1.4 million from August 2005, when the requirements study was begun, to May, when Phase II, satellite communications, was implemended.