Feds to Check More Migrant IDs at Sea

The government is expanding a test program that matches fingerprints and photographs of illegal immigrants intercepted at sea with a federal database, U.S. officials announced Wednesday.

The “biometrics-at-sea” program has been used since November 2006 in the dangerous Mona Pass between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. It will be used by Coast Guard vessels operating out of South Florida in spring 2008, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Wayne Justice.

“We’ve gotten the concept down in the Mona Pass,” Justice said at a news conference. “We’re taking a measured approach to expansion.”

Justice said the estimated number of migrants attempting to reach U.S. soil through the Mona Pass has dropped to about 5,000 since the program started, about half the number for the previous 12 months. He credited the biometrics program, along with stepped-up patrols, an aggressive public deterrence campaign in the Dominican Republic and improved intelligence.

“There’s no question that we have seen a drop in the total flow,” Justice said.

The program allows Coast Guard personnel, using a handheld device, to take digital fingerprints and photographs at sea of migrants and smugglers they intercept. The data is e-mailed via satellite link to a Homeland Security Department database near Washington, D.C., and results are back to the vessel within 3 to 5 minutes, officials said.

The database of some 3.2 million names is maintained under Homeland Security’s US-VISIT program, which stands for Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology. Its director, Robert Mocny, said the database allows the Coast Guard to quickly check migrants for such things as previous deportation orders or criminal warrants.

Those who don’t match any names become enrolled in the database, Mocny said.

“These people were trying to hide behind a cloak of anonymity,” he said. “We know biometrics is the wave of the future as far as identification.”

Rear Adm. David Kunkel, the Coast Guard’s District 7 commander, said that since November 2006, biometrics data has been collected from 1,368 migrants in the Mona Pass, resulting in 289 matches in the US-VISIT database.

Of those, 93 were brought to Puerto Rico for prosecution, mainly for attempted illegal entry into the U.S., and 47 of those people were trying to return despite previous deportation orders. Those who are not prosecuted are usually returned to their home countries.

Biometrics data also is used by U.S. officials along the border with Mexico and at other ports of entry. Biometric checks are not conducted on most entrants, however, because border officials say it would lead to intolerable delays.