Summarized for Public release

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept 

Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Office of Inspector General 

Office of Inspections and Special Reviews

OIG-06-43 June 2006 
Office of Inspector General 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security 

Washington, DC 20528

June 23, 2006 

Preface 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) was established by 

the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-296) by amendment to the Inspector General 

Act of 1978. This is one of a series of audit, inspection, and special reports prepared as part of our 

oversight responsibility to promote economy, effectiveness, and efficiency within the department. 

This report assesses the actions taken by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to intercept 

suspected terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry. It is based on interviews with employees and officials of 

relevant agencies and institutions, direct observations, and a review of applicable documents. 

The recommendations herein have been developed to the best knowledge available to our office, and 

have been discussed in draft with those responsible for implementation. It is our hope that this report 

will result in more effective, efficient, and economical operations. We express our appreciation to all 

of those who contributed to the preparation of this report. 

 

 

 

Richard L. Skinner 

Inspector General 
SUMMARIZED FOR RELEASE 

OIG 

Department of Homeland Security 

Office of Inspector General 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 1 

Introduction 

We reviewed the procedures employed by the Department of Homeland 

Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to 

prevent known and suspected terrorists from entering the United States 

through the country’s 324 air, land, and sea Ports of Entry (POE). In 

February 2004, the CBP Office of Anti-Terrorism issued guidance to 

standardize the targeting and screening of known and suspected terrorists 

attempting to enter the United States. 

This is a summary of a longer and more detailed report that has been 

provided to program managers and Congress. Law Enforcement Sensitive 

information has been removed from this version at the request of program 

managers. 

Results in Brief 

CBP has improved information sharing capabilities within the 

organization to smooth the flow of arriving passengers and increase the 

effectiveness of limited resources at POEs. Earlier, officers at POEs 

possessed limited information to help them resolve the identities of 

individuals mistakenly matched to the terrorist watch list, but a current 

initiative aims to provide supervisors at POEs with much more 

information to help them positively identify and clear individuals with 

names similar to those in the terrorist database. CBP procedures are 

highly prescriptive and withhold from supervisors the authority to make 

timely and informed decisions regarding the admissibility of individuals 

who they could quickly confirm are not the suspected terrorist. 

As CBP has stepped up its efforts to intercept known and suspected 

terrorists at ports of entry, traditional missions such as narcotics 

interdiction and identification of fraudulent immigration documentation 

have been adversely affected. Recent data indicates a significant decrease 

over the past few years in the interception of narcotics and the 

identification of fraudulent immigration documents, especially at airports. 
SUMMARIZED FOR RELEASE 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 2 

When a watchlisted or targeted1 individual is encountered at a POE, CBP 

generates several reports summarizing the incident. Each of these reports 

provides a different level of detail, and is distributed to a different 

readership. It is unclear, however, how details of the encounter and the 

information obtained from the suspected terrorist are disseminated for 

analysis. This inconsistent reporting is preventing DHS from developing 

independent intelligence assessments and may be preventing important 

information from inclusion in national strategic intelligence analyses. 

During an encounter with a watchlisted individual, CBP officers at the 

POE often need to discuss sensitive details about the individual with law 

enforcement agencies and CBP personnel in headquarters offices. Some 

case details are classified. Because some CBP officers at POEs have not 

been granted the necessary security clearance, they are unable to review 

important information about a watchlisted individual and may not be able 

to participate with law enforcement agencies in interviews of certain 

individuals. 

To improve the effectiveness of CBP personnel in their mission to prevent 

known and suspected terrorists from entering the United States, we are 

recommending that CBP: expand a biometric information collection 

program to include volunteers who would not normally provide this 

information when entering the United States; authorize POE supervisors 

limited discretion to make more timely admissibility determinations; 

review port of entry staffing models to ensure the current workforce is 

able to perform the entire range of CBP mission; establish a policy for 

more consistent reporting to intelligence agencies the details gathered 

during secondary interviews; and ensure all counterterrorism personnel at 

POEs are granted an appropriate security clearance. 

Background 

On a typical day, CBP processes over 1.1 million arriving passengers for 

entry into the country at 324 POEs. It is the responsibility of CBP officers 

to screen all arriving passengers for customs and immigration violations, 

and to detect and prevent terrorists and weapons of mass destruction from 

entering the United States, while simultaneously facilitating legitimate 

trade and travel. 

 

1

 A watchlisted person is a passenger whose name or other biographic data matches or is very close to that of a 

person listed in the Terrorist Screening Center's database of approximately 200,000 names of known or 

suspected terrorists. A targeted person is a non-watchlisted person who has been selected to be given additional 

scrutiny at the port of entry only for this particular trip. Such selection would be based on a variety of expert 

screening activities. 
SUMMARIZED FOR RELEASE 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 3 

When an international flight or passenger vessel bound for a U.S. airport 

or seaport departs a foreign country, the airline or cruise line is required to 

transmit to CBP a manifest that lists all passengers that are on board. The 

airline or cruise line must send the manifest to CBP within fifteen minutes 

of departure. The information contained in the manifest includes each 

passenger’s name, date of birth, passport number, and the country that 

issued the passport. Manifest information is processed in the Automated 

Passenger Information System (APIS). 

Computers screen passenger manifests and identify passengers that have 

names similar to those on the terrorism watchlist – also called the Terrorist 

Screening Database2

 (TSDB) – or who have suspicious travel histories. If 

queries of immigration, customs, and criminal record databases yield any 

possibly derogatory information, or if the passenger’s name matches the 

TSDB, additional information about the arriving passenger is sought. This 

supplemental information might make it clear whether the traveler is or is 

not the person listed in the TSDB. If this process confirms that the 

arriving passenger may match a person listed in the TSDB, federal agents 

in addition to CBP officers may be present when the watchlisted passenger 

arrives. 

Once all interviews have been completed, CBP decides whether to grant or 

deny the passenger admission into the United States. If the decision is to 

deny admission, the passenger is returned to the country from which he or 

she traveled to the United States. 

CBP officers we interviewed estimated that many secondary screenings 

conducted at U.S. ports of entry are the result of false matches to names in 

the TSDB. Using name-based methods to identify known and suspected 

terrorists, an incoming passenger is often incorrectly identified as a match 

to the individual listed in the TSDB. That the traveler is not the terrorist is 

only established after the passenger arrives at the port of entry and is 

interviewed. POE inspectors reported that the vast majority of false 

positive matches to the TSDB are repeat screenings of individuals that 

have been matched previously and at that time determined not to be the 

person watchlisted in the terrorist database. First-time referrals to 

secondary of individuals who are incorrectly matched to records in the 

TSDB are probably unavoidable. As long as CBP relies on name-based 

watchlists, passengers with names similar to known or suspected terrorists 

will continue to be identified as possible matches to individuals in the 

 

2

 The TSDB is a compilation of several lists maintained by separate agencies. It consolidates the Consular 

Lookout and Support System (CLASS) and TIPOFF file from the Department of State; Interagency Border and 

Inspection System (IBIS) from the Department of the Homeland Security; No-Fly and Selectee Lists from the 

Transportation Security Administration (TSA); National Automated Immigration Lookout System (NAILS) and 

Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service 

(INS); Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (VGTOF) and Integrated Automated Fingerprint 

Identification System (IAFIS) from the FBI; and the Interpol Terrorism Watch List. 
SUMMARIZED FOR RELEASE 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 4 

TSDB, and referred for secondary inspection at a port of entry. However, 

CBP officers told us numerous times that repeat matches on subsequent 

trips of individuals previously determined not to be the individual in the 

TSDB was an extremely inefficient use of their time. 

One tool at the disposal of CBP that could be used to reduce the number of 

repeat false positive matches is the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status 

Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program. US-VISIT collects and 

retains biographic, travel, and biometric information, such as photographs 

and fingerprints, of some foreign nationals entering and departing the 

United States. American citizens, permanent residents, Canadian 

nationals, and Mexican nationals with Border Crossing Cards are not 

required to submit to US-VISIT screening upon entry into the United 

States. The US-VISIT enrollment process involves electronic scanning of 

the traveler’s left and right index fingers and the taking of a digital 

photograph.3

 Since the information collected under the US-VISIT 

program is unique positive identifying information, it could be used to 

immediately identify a passenger that had been previously screened in 

secondary inspections upon entry into the United States. For example, a 

Canadian citizen who shares a name with a known terrorist, but is not the 

individual in the TSDB, is repeatedly referred to secondary inspections 

each time she enters the United States. If she is allowed to enroll in the 

US-VISIT program and provide biometric information, each subsequent 

time she enters the United States, CBP officers would quickly identify her 

as the person who has been previously interviewed and found not to be the 

person listed in the TSDB – and admit her without another interview. 

On April 26, 2005, the Washington Post published an Op-Ed essay that 

directly relates to the subject. It was written by a frequent business 

traveler whose name, Omar Khan, is similar to that of a watchlisted 

terrorist. Mr. Khan is a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States. In 

his essay, he provides a passenger’s perspective of the repeated screenings 

to which he is subjected each time he returns to the United States from a 

foreign trip. He also contrasts U.S. procedures to those he experiences 

upon arrival in some of the other countries he frequently visits, where his 

name still generates an alert but where POE procedures are less inflexible. 

His essay is reprinted with permission in Appendix A. 

 

3

 DHS Secretary Chertoff announced on July 13, 2005 that US-VISIT would be enhanced to collect ten finger 

scans. 
Appendix A 

Screening in Need of Sense, Washington Post, April 26, 2005 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 5 

Screening in Need of Sense 

Airline Databases and Bureaucracy Add Up to Wasted Resources 

By Omar Khan 

Post 

Tuesday, April 26, 2005; A15 

I'd like to share a personal experience that has ripple effects on our collective sense of "homeland 

security." As the head of a global leadership consulting firm, I travel frequently in and out of the 

United States. As a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, I'd never had any problems doing so. 

I grew up in New York, the son of a Pakistani consul general, attended Stanford University, lived 

here as an adult. Emotionally, the United States has been my home for a long time. 

Last October, returning to the United States from Canada, I was pulled aside for "secondary 

inspection." I sighed but reconciled myself (after all, if it can happen to Ted Kennedy . . .) to what I 

hoped would be a minor inconvenience. 

We missed our flight. Finally, I was called in. Apparently airline databases respond only to names. 

In parts of the world, Omar Khan is as common a name as John Smith. Although I have an 

uncommon middle name, Saqib, the database isn't that sophisticated. Still, stopping every Omar 

Khan doesn't seem very efficient to me. 

I am a consultant, and I think in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. The weary immigration 

supervisor told me that even pilots who fly the Toronto-La Guardia sector every week are stopped 

repeatedly. 

"You mean I have to go through this every time?" I asked. Apparently. I was warned to expect to 

spend two to three hours each time attempting to get back into the country of which I am a legal 

resident. This struck me as insane. How are we made safer by repeated security checks because of an 

indiscriminate emphasis on generic names? 

Earlier I'd had a similar experience in the Philippines. Another Omar Khan had written bad checks 

there. But unlike the bureaucratic Department of Homeland Security, the immigration supervisor 

there was empowered. After checking the facts and my passport, she waved me through. She 

suggested how I could avoid being stopped in the future: Present myself at the appropriate ministry 

and let them run a check, and then be given a document for future visits. As I had a long-term 

consulting commitment with a firm there, I did so. The whole process took 30 minutes, and the 

Philippine authorities and I are now spared a needless hassle and waste of time. 

A month ago I came back to the United States. As predicted, there had been no update to the 

database. It took more than two hours again. The exasperated immigration officers told me that they 

had to process the same people, even if they could verify that they had already done so, because they 

weren't allowed to use their judgment. One of their own supervisors had been detained for more than 

three hours, even after showing his credentials! 
Appendix A 

Screening in Need of Sense, Washington Post, April 26, 2005 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 6 

Because of global consulting assignments, I may be in and out of the United States 15 to 20 times a 

year. I suggest that checking the same people on the same route each week is a sheer waste of 

resources. During the last multi-hour fiasco the immigration guys and I consulted and came up with 

some simple and immediately achievable solutions. 

For one, database management should allow classification by more than first and last name. Anyone 

can figure out a way of listing a cleared person's passport or green card number for immediate future 

clearance. Thereafter, immigration could focus on those we are seeking. 

Currently, nonresidents coming into the United States are photographed and fingerprinted, a 30-

second process. It would be simple to do the same for those pulled aside for secondary inspection, 

even citizens or residents (if there are civil liberties concerns, people could be offered this choice). 

That way, the next time, each person's photo and fingerprint, correlated if necessary with ID, would 

show that he or she previously had been cleared. Limited resources could be better deployed. 

Finally, and critically, it is a principle of leadership practice to empower people as close as possible 

to where decisions have to be made. With clear parameters, immigration officers with years of 

experience should be able to decide whether someone can be excluded from consideration. 

Otherwise we're wasting the experience and judgment of the professionals we have. 

When our ports are not fully protected, our borders are inadequately guarded, and only a portion of 

imported cargo is X-rayed, it seems to me we have higher priorities than processing the same people 

repeatedly. 

The writer is a senior partner in Sensei International, a business consultancy. 

© 2005 The Washington Post Company 
Appendix B 

Major Contributors to This Report 

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 7 

Douglas Ellice, Chief Inspector

Randall Bibby, Chief Inspector 

Philip Windust, Senior Inspector 

W. Preston Jacobs, Inspector 
Appendix C 

Report Distribution

Review of CBP Actions Taken to Intercept Suspected Terrorists at U.S. Ports of Entry 

Page 8 

Department of Homeland Security

Secretary 

Deputy Secretary 

Chief of Staff 

Deputy Chief of Staff 

General Counsel 

Executive Secretariat 

Customs and Border Protection, Commissioner 

Customs and Border Protection, Audit Liaison 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Assistant Secretary 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Audit Liaison

US-VISIT Program Office, Director 

Assistant Secretary for Legislative & Intergovernmental Affairs 

Assistant Secretary for Policy 

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs 

Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis 

DHS GAO OIG Liaison 

Office of Management and Budget

Chief, Homeland Security Branch 

DHS OIG Program Examiner 

Congress

Congressional Oversight and Appropriations Committees, as appropriate 
REDACTED FOR RELEASE 

Additional Information and Copies 

To obtain additional copies of this report, call the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at 

(202) 254-4100, fax your request to (202) 254-4285, or visit the OIG web site at 

www.dhs.gov.

OIG Hotline 

To report alleged fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement, or any other kind of 

criminal or noncriminal misconduct relative to department programs or operations, 

call the OIG Hotline at 1-800-323-8603; write to Department of Homeland Security, 

Washington, DC 20528, Attn: Office of Inspector General, Investigations Division – 

Hotline. The OIG seeks to protect the identity of each writer and caller.