Program's Lack Of Formal Plan Criticized

Lawmakers said they had serious doubts the Department of Homeland Security would be able to implement a border security exit system in airports by the end of next year as promised.

Robert Mocny, director of the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, told a Congressional hearing Thursday an exit system requiring airlines to collect departing foreign passengers' fingerprints should be in place by December 2008.

"I've not seen anything to give me any confidence to show that's realistic," Randolph Hite, of the Government Accountability Office told the House Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. "There's a difference between a goal, and a schedule that's been defined in a (deliberate) rigorous fashion."

US-VISIT identifies people using two fingerprints and a photograph and is currently in use to monitor who is entering the US. The program has, so far, processed more than 76 million visitors and intercepted about 1,800 immigration violators, as well as people with criminal records.

But the part intended to track foreign citizens leaving the country isn't working out so well, according to the Associated Press. The system has been consumed by oversight and technical problems.

James May, president and chief executive of the Air Transport Association, didn't think the implementation timeline feasible, either. He believes the government should be the ones collecting the fingerprints.

"At the end of the day, it's a law enforcement function," May (right) said.

Lawmakers also criticized the program's lack of a formal plan when $250 has been spent on it already.

"I won't say it's not a challenge," Mocny said. But with $32 million available for the biometric exit system and the fact that airlines do "inherently governmental" work anyway, like checking passports, he's confident the goal will be met.

Congress has funneled $1.7 billion to the program since 2003 when they mandated, as ANN reported, an automated entry-exit program be implemented at the 50 busiest land ports of entry in an effort to keep terrorists from entering the country.

It is currently in place at 116 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land ports of entry. The biometric exit system has been tested through trials at 12 airports and two seaports, said the AP.

Reportedly, none of the $462 million current funding request for the program for 2008 is marked for the exit system itself.

Mocny said any future funding requests will be based on the airline's portion of costs.

FMI: www.dhs.gov