CG cutter crew member involved in an interdiction captures young woman’s biometrics while wearing a medical mask.  (Picture courtesy of Ricardo Castrodad, PAO in Sector San Juan.)

Among its essential missions, the U.S. Coast Guard patrols U.S. coasts and waterways providing mariner assistance, conducting law enforcement and drug interdictions, and protecting against illegal migrant entry into the United States through its Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations (AMIO).  Coast Guard cutters patrolling the 90-miles between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, known as the Mona Passage, routinely are faced with illegal migrant traffic attempting the dangerous trip in homemade wooden boats.  Before the use of biometric identification, rarely were any of the thousands of persons attempting this endeavor prosecuted, according to Dr. Thomas Amerson, principal scientist at the Coast Guard R&D Center in New London, Conn.

“In the five years prior to starting the Biometrics at Sea project, the annual attempts to illegally migrate to the United States through the Mona Passage ranged from 4,000 to 10,000,” Amerson said.  “These boats, known as ‘yolas,’ have little or no water, food, or safety devices.  Typically, they are dangerously overloaded with as many as 130 persons on a boat less than 50 feet in length.  We see men and women of all ages, children, and even infants.”  He explained that the cutters not only interdict these boats to prevent illegal entry, but also to prevent loss of life that often results when these non-sea-worthy boats capsize.  In AMIO operations, the Coast Guard cutters—110’ patrol boats with a 16-person crew—bring the migrants onboard to collect their biometrics and repatriate those not detained for arrest.  Much effort has been given to designing the biometric system and operations that help preserve the crew’s situational awareness and reduce demand on resources.

Coast Guard cutter approaches yola to determine if occupants are attempting to enter illegally into the United States or a U.S. Territory.

For more than two years, the Coast Guard has been collecting biometric data and matching them against the DHS U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) Program’s IDENT biometric database.  “Last year, there were fewer than 1,000 persons attempting to enter the United States through the Mona Passage,” Amerson said.  “We’re very happy about our role in reducing illegal immigration and also happy that these people are not subjecting themselves to this danger.”

While there could be other contributing factors to the decrease in traffic—such as economic conditions, weather-related circumstances, and an active public relations campaign warning against the dangers of such travel—the net result has been a dramatic drop; a 40% decrease in traffic the first year and a 75% decrease the second year.  In addition, of the 2,623 persons from whom two-print biometric fingerprints were taken in the Mona Passage and the Florida Straits, there have been 663 matches against the IDENT database, resulting in 271 prosecutions with a 100% conviction rate.  “We have picked up wanted criminals for drug and murder convictions, as well as approximately 60 persons convicted of migrant smuggling,” Amerson said.

In the initial six-month phase of the project, Coast Guard crews in San Juan used commercial handheld devices to capture digital fingerprints and photos of interdicted migrants, which were then searched against prints in a section of the IDENT database.  The extract included 750,000 to 800,000 sets of prints selected regionally to include people under deportation orders, those convicted of aggravated felonies, or those appearing on watch lists of known and suspected terrorists.

The current operation relies on match-and-enroll activities against the largest federal fingerprint database, US-VISIT’s IDENT, composed primarily of two-fingerprint scans and digital photographs of foreign visitors at ports of entry.  Amerson said that the Coast Guard is planning to test 10-print equipment that could then be checked against the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the DoD’s Automated Biometric Identification System (DoD ABIS) biometric repositories, as well.

Last year, Coast Guard cutters in South Florida were outfitted with biometric capabilities and have extended this effective homeland defense operation more broadly into the Caribbean Sea.  In little more than four years since its inception, Amerson said that the project has cost the Coast Guard approximately $3.2 million, and a Program of Record will be standing up as early as this October.  The Coast Guard already supports the project with an around-the-clock helpline, conducts annual training on the equipment, and is developing a Train-the-Trainer program.

Amerson looks forward to the development of a Biometrics Enabled Identity Intelligence program through partnership with the Coast Guard Intelligence Directorate.  This will leverage the ability to collect biometrics and submit the files to IDENT, IAFIS, and DoD ABIS by conducting data analysis with the El Paso Intelligence Center, DHS, and DoD intelligence partners.  Preliminary trials have already shown an ability to provide actionable intelligence in an operationally relevant timeframe.