Tightened scrutiny at U.S. borders draws ire

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PORT HURON, Mich. – Andrea Schnekenburger pressed her two index fingers on a scanning pad at the U.S. border last Thursday, becoming one of the first travelers to submit such data to a vast new bank of fingerprints and photographs that will be taken of millions of people who cross land borders to enter the United States.

“At least they didn’t use ink,” said Schnekenburger, 42, a German resident of Canada en route to a U.S. business appointment. “It was easier than I thought.”

This week, three U.S. border crossings – one from Canada, at Port Huron, and two from Mexico, at Laredo, Texas, and Douglas, Ariz. – launched a program run by the Department of Homeland Security to collect fingerprints and photos at U.S. borders.

It will be expanded to the 50 busiest crossings by the end of next month, U.S. officials said.

The requirements won’t apply to U.S. or Canadian citizens or to travelers under age 14 or over 79. There are also exceptions for Mexicans with special border-crossing cards known as laser visas, according to DHS officials.

Only 3 percent of an estimated 108 million people who enter the United States at legal land checkpoints annually will be affected, they said, while the program will increase security for the United States, catch criminals and speed processing at the border by computerizing some functions.

But groups in Canada and Mexico complain that the new process will collect an Orwellian databank of personal information on law-abiding visitors, will unfairly target racial groups, might slow the border-crossing process and is unlikely to stop a terrorist from coming into the country.

Mexican critics say the program is another step toward making the borders in America “a dividing line” and a sign of “distrust” of Mexicans. Canadian critics say files created on thousands of their residents will “criminalize” the border process.

Schnekenburger reflects that ambivalence. “I kind of felt it was an invasion of my privacy, but on the other hand, I can see the point of it,” she said after entering the Customs and Border Protection office on the U.S. side of the soaring Blue Water Bridge that connects to Canada 60 miles north of Detroit.

Those crossing the bridge with no Canadian passport, like Schnekenburger, are directed into a building where an agent takes digital photos of them and scans their index fingers.

The system began operating at 130 U.S. airports and seaports in January, and fingerprints and photos already are required as part of the application for anyone needing a visa. But this expansion to land crossings particularly affects the busy daily commerce across the borders of the country’s only contiguous neighbors.

Canadian passport holders and Mexicans who work in the United States and have a laser visa card, which already carries the bearer’s photo and fingerprint, are now exempt from the program. U.S. officials have sent mixed signals about whether the data collection eventually will include everyone.

Critics in Canada say the exclusions mean the program unfairly targets an estimated 1 million Canadian residents who are classified as “landed immigrants” or permanent residents who have not obtained a Canadian passport.

“There are a high number of landed immigrants who are from (nonwhite) racial backgrounds,” said Margaret Parson, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic in Toronto. “This labels them as potential terrorists.”

“Any government has a right to apply security measures. But this is tantamount to racial profiling,” said Audrey Jamal, executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation, which speaks on behalf of 500,000 Canadian Arabs. “Security policies should not target one ethnic group over another, nor erode civil liberties. Our community is feeling tremendously targeted.”

Other critics question the system’s security value. Last month, Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, publicized a Stanford University study that said matching two fingerprints with an existing database works only 53 percent of the time. Critics in Canada say potential terrorist groups aren’t going to use operatives whose fingerprints already are known to the United States.

“This is not a measure to make America safer,” said Sharri Aiken, an immigration law professor at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. “The people who are responsible for these kinds of attacks have no prior record. They aren’t known to authorities, for the most part, and would likely come up absolutely clean in a biometric scan.

“Fingerprinting will not make any Americans any safer and represents an overzealous criminalization of the border.”

Robert Mocny, deputy director of the US-VISIT program in Washington, part of the DHS, disagrees that the program is racially discriminatory and insists the data collected are protected by U.S. privacy laws.

He said the new program was “not sold only as an anti-terrorist program. It is a multifaceted program” to modernize border procedures and “strengthen the immigration system.”

Homeland Security officials acknowledged the system wouldn’t stop a potential terrorist with no record but say it will be a useful law enforcement tool.

“Our concern is with the safety of the American public and those visiting the United States,” said David Dusellier, manager at the Port Huron entry point. “This will allow us to capture information on persons coming in, and if there were an event, we will have information in the system so that law enforcement can identify and capture them.”

The new system also enables customs agents to more easily catch those using someone else’s passport by instantly comparing their picture at the border with photos taken for previous visa applications, Dusellier said.

Eventually, it might be extended to people leaving the country, he said, “to ensure that those people who come into the United States go back out again and don’t overstay beyond the legal limits.”

The program, US-VISIT (Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) was approved by Congress to try to identify those who overstay their visa limits.

But so far there is no check when leaving the United States by land. Most land borders don’t have the physical facilities on exit, officials said.

“That’s our next challenge,” Mocny said. For now, DHS officials instead tout the program’s potential to catch incoming persons linked to other crimes.

“We have done a remarkable job of working with the FBI to get fingerprints of criminals who are foreign nationals,” Mocny said. He said arrests at airports as a result of the program “point to a demonstrable increase in security.”

Critics say the new process will exacerbate delays at the Mexican and Canadian borders, which already have considerable daily shuttling of trucks and workers.

“This program could turn what has traditionally been a bottleneck into a complete blockage,” said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a leading international relations specialist in Mexico City. “This could be truly terrible. The border, instead of being a connecting bridge, is becoming a dividing line.”

Omar Bazan Flores, a Mexican federal congressman who represents the border state of Chihuahua, said the new security program “shows a measure of distrust” of Mexicans and “is obviously going to be detrimental to Mexicans, because of the longer waits and more intense questioning of those who want to cross the border.”

Border officials insist the new procedures will take little time to complete.

“Legitimate travelers should spend five minutes in here and be on down the road,” Dusellier said. “This is going to be quicker, and make their travel a lot more expedited.”

Sullivan reported from Mexico City. Researcher Bart Beeson in Mexico City contributed to this report.