Public Affairs Officer Michael Milne has worked for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) for 37 years. Stationed in Seattle, Milne says he has seen a seismic change at the agency post 9/11, when it not only started beefing up its enforcement division, but also reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security. One thing, however, has never changed.
“We have always historically had a good working relationship with Canada’s border enforcement agency, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), and that country’s other law enforcement agencies,” Milne says. And that’s a good thing because the job faced by both countries is enormous and many of their problems are shared.
With 328 ports of entry and thousands of miles of border to protect, it’s fair to say that CBP has one of this country’s toughest and most challenging missions. In addition to providing security for the physical divisions separating the U.S. from Canada and Mexico, CBP deploys the U.S. Coast Guard, now a part of DHS, to keep our maritime borders both as safe and impenetrable as possible. Once considered mostly a military service, the Coast Guard integrates law enforcement duties into its operations, standing as one of the most significant resources in the prevention of smuggling and waterborne illegal entry into the U.S.
But that’s only a portion of the CBP’s duties. With upwards of 60,000 employees, the CBP works with other agencies to prevent the egress and ingress of terrorists and their weapons, while guarding the borders from illegal entry, carrying out drug interdiction and preventing contraband from entering the country. From exotic live animals to produce and foliage sporting insects not indigenous to the U.S. to the trafficking of human beings, CBP employees have seen it all. And trying to describe all of the agency’s duties is a daunting task: the organization’s core mission is so broad and far-reaching, the CBP says on its website that, “on a typical day, CBP welcomes a million visitors, screens more than 67,000 cargo containers, arrests more than 1,100 individuals and seizes nearly 6 tons of illicit drugs.” And they do it while working with hundreds, if not thousands, of jurisdictional issues—many of them international.
The agency itself
While CBP works all fronts along the U.S. border; it’s the couple thousand miles dividing this country from Mexico that capture the hot bright lights of the press and the lion’s share of the public’s attention. Although illegal immigration isn’t as big an issue for those who man the U.S.-Canadian border, the CBP currently faces mounting concerns over terrorism and the need to develop new cutting-edge strategies to detect possible threats to this country’s security, while making the process more streamlined for both commercial and private travelers. So they’re looking at employing technologies that can offer solutions to both concerns. Milne says the agency has come a long way on that front.
Technology is growing more complicated as well as more common. Officers now wear radiation detectors on their belts. In addition, says Milne, “Along the ports of entry we’ve added gamma imaging machines…where we can look into rail cars or big containers.” Even trains go through radiation screening and testing.
And in the field of biometrics, he says, finger scanning is routine when passports and visas are issued in connection with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. He says ePassports, the NEXUS program (a joint-U.S.-Canadian program that involves using biometrics to identify the enrollee) and other measures have upped the security ante when it comes to entering or leaving either country.
The CBP faces enormous challenges in the future. One of the most challenging is to target identifying the “people we want to identify (such as someone on the watch list) as opposed to the guy coming over to go to Wal-Mart. We want to separate the wheat from the chaff,” says Milne.
Another bridge to Canada
While numerous points of entry between the U.S. and Canada already exist, Detroit holds the honor of being one of the busiest immigration thruways between the two countries. In fact, fully one-fourth of all trade between the U.S. and Canada takes place between the Motor City and its just-across-the-border sister city, Windsor. Because of the crushing amount of traffic between the two countries, U.S. and Canadian officials hope to collaborate and build a new bridge that will connect the two countries, as well as provide a more technologically sound portal for both travelers and commerce.
In 2013, the U.S. State Department issued a presidential permit in connection with the construction of a bridge tying Detroit and Windsor via a new $2.1-billion International Trade Crossing. The collaborative project would supersede the Ambassador Bridge, a privately owned span that currently serves the Detroit-Windsor crossing. The Ambassador has monopolized border traffic in that area since 1929. The bridge’s owner has sued unsuccessfully on several fronts to stop the project, which is currently awaiting funding on the American end.
Andrew Finn, with the Wilson Center—a Washington think tank named for Pres. Woodrow Wilson—believes the bridge will find its funding. “Ninety-seven percent of the focus is on the problem of immigration, which of course is not a problem with Canada. The big thing coming up is the infrastructure problem.” And that makes the bridge even more of a priority.
Finn, an attorney, says he’s read the contract between the U.S. and Canada concerning the new center/bridge and was surprised with the terms. “According to the contract, the U.S. is under no obligation to pay for this. I have no idea why Canada would agree,” he says. However, Finn believes that the U.S. will ante up some of the money, even if it isn’t obligated to do so.
“I know there are some people (in U.S. government) sympathetic to the bridge,” he says. But the funding is caught up in an immigration bill. With Congress at odds with the White House, it remains to be seen whether or not the $250 million due from the U.S. to complete the project will be appropriated.
“My guess is that something will be done there,” Finn says of the busiest, by volume, car-crossing in the world.
The view from the other side
The bridge will house state-of-the-art biometric technology that will speed up the process of moving between the two borders and — officials hope — also prevent potential terrorists from gaining entry to either country and/or moving weapons. Bill Anderson, a professor at the University of Windsor and director of the university-based Cross Border Institute, a think tank specializing in border issues, says that aside from terrorism issues, Canadians are more concerned with the movement of firearms and cigarettes across their border.
“What’s available in one country is illegal in another,” Anderson says. He points out that both countries have border issues peculiar to their own needs and situation, but share an abiding interest in the integrity of the border and a desire to catch potential terrorism before it can be acted upon. Targeted checks will be a major component to help detect terrorist activity.
“Random searches are much less likely to turn up anything (of value), while in targeted searches by definition you are trying to identify people who are higher risk. The idea of targeting is to make searching more productive,” he says.
Anderson agrees that both countries’ laws permit targeted searches at the border, even though the same type of targeting might constitute “profiling” and those searches are under fire when used on city streets. “It’s a difficult issue and one that has to be handled carefully,” he says.
When it comes to using biometric technology, Anderson says one of the biggest issues border officials face will be to win over the public. “The public associates being fingerprinted with criminal activity, doing something wrong.” As for iris scanning technology, he says “There’s something creepy about looking inside your eyeball. People are uncomfortable with it.”
Finn of the Wilson Center agrees that the public sell could be difficult. “The concern was that at the Canada-U.S. border, that (biometrics) could actually slow things down and create a bigger problem than we already have. I think one of the things they’re really trying to do is push the Nexus (trusted traveler) program.”
Anderson says that while there may be some push-back on the implementation of biometrics at the Detroit-Windsor crossing, he agrees that biometrics are much more accurate than “an officer looking at your face and then looking at a tiny piece of plastic to see if you match the photo.”
It’s not like television
You’ve probably seen this happen in countless thrillers: the hero or bad guy encounters a seemingly impenetrable door that can only be accessed by fingerprint recognition. The character whips out a severed finger or cleverly obtained impression, places it on the keypad and—voila!—the door opens. Today’s biometrics are much more sophisticated and can’t be spoofed as easily.
Mark Cornett is COO of NextIDBiometrics, a company with its roots in academic research, manufactures an add-on to a fingerprint scanner. The scanner captures an image and then matches it to a previously captured image through comparison of various minutia points establishing the person’s identify. His company supplements that analysis by determining if spoofing has taken place.
Cornett says those concerned with border security are primarily interested in catching individuals on watch lists trying to enter the country. Two types of fingerprint detection systems facilitate this work: one-to-one and one-to-many. One-to-one is basically what you use to unlock a phone. One-to-many compares fingerprints against millions of identifying images.
“The fear with regard to spoofing is not so much someone spoofing to be someone else, but someone spoofing to not be themselves, and hiding their identity through spoofing,” he says.
One of the dangers of spoofing would be amplified in what he calls “unobserved” crossing points, such as when an individual simply inputs his fingerprint into a kiosk for analysis. That’s when spoofing would most likely occur, according to Cornett.
One way around this is to develop technology—some of which already exists—that detects what Cornett terms “liveness.” A pulse and other sensors that could corroborate that the person is using his or her own fingerprint or other biometric data is key. In fact, according to Anderson of the Cross Border Institute, Prof. Roman Maev, a Russian-born physicist and founding director of the University of Windsor-based Institute for Diagnostic Imaging, has been researching a fingerprint scanner that would not simply look at the fingerprint pattern, but also examine the pattern of the blood vessels under the skin.
Cornett says ultrasonic technology, as well as thermal-based tech and other new approaches being developed, could make spoofing much more difficult for criminals and, at the same time, help keep the borders safer.
A 12-year veteran of police work, Carole Moore has served in patrol, forensics, crime prevention and criminal investigations, and has extensive training in many law enforcement disciplines.
