US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has revealed that it will pilot the collection of biometric and biographic information on selected flights from up to 10 identified US airports over the next year.In a notice published in the Federal Register, the CBP revealed that the programme will be called the “Be-Mobile Air Test”.The test will be rolled out over this one-year period at Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California; San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, California; Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia.The list also includes Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois; Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark, New Jersey; John F. Kennedy International Airport, Jamaica, New York; Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Dallas, Texas; George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas; and Washington Dulles International Airport, Sterling, Virginia.The CBP says its BE-Mobile Air Test is designed to test both a new biometric exit concept of operations at selected airports with CBP officers using a wireless handheld device at the departure gate to collect biometric and biographic data and CBP's outbound enforcement policies and workforce distribution procedures.”Through the test, CBP will be able to conduct a statistically valid survey of the air outbound environment that will assist DHS in determining how to effectively implement an air biometric exit system. The BE-Mobile Air Test is one of CBP's key steps in developing the capability to fulfill DHS' mandate to collect biometric information from certain arriving and departing aliens.”Flights will be pre-selected on a random basis or chosen to correspond with existing outbound enforcement operations. For the selected flight, CBP officers will deploy to the departure gate and position themselves near the departing passenger loading bridge to collect certain data from certain departing travelers.Once travelers begin the departure process, CBP officers will review the traveler's travel document (passport, visa, lawful permanent resident card, or other qualifying travel document) to determine if the traveler is an alien who is required to submit biometric information at the time of departure as described in the next section, entitled “Aliens Covered.” If so, the CBP officers will obtain biographic data from these select aliens by swiping or inputting the information from the alien's travel document on a wireless handheld device.The biographic data collected during this test will be used to create a biographic-based departure record in a CBP biographic database. It will be paired with the biometric data collected to create a complete, biometrically-based departure record for that alien.The CBP officer will also capture two of the alien's fingerprints and verify the fingerprints against the alien's biometric identity record. Based on the results of the verification or additional law enforcement information, the officer may then perform additional analysis or conduct a further interview to determine if additional action may be appropriate. When the departure inspection is complete, the results of the transaction will be recorded in a DHS biometric database and a CBP biographic database in real time.The primary mission of any biometric exit program is to provide assurance of traveler identity on departure, giving CBP the opportunity to match the departure with a prior arrival record. This capability enhances the integrity of the immigration system and the ability to accurately detect travelers that have overstayed their lawful period of admission to the United States.CBP will analyse and evaluate the test's performance based on a number of criteria, including the occurrence of watchlist matches based on biometric data, the occurrence of biometric-identified fraud, the occurrence of inaccurate APIS manifests, how overstay calculations are impacted, the transaction times for exit processing per traveler, the rate of successful transactions, the occurrence of law enforcement hits, including those requiring referral to secondary inspection, the observations from the CBP officers performing the test, and system performance. CBP will use the results of the BE-Mobile Air Test to determine strategic programmatic requirements for a comprehensive biometric exit solution.

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