CBP has two priority missions: (1) detecting and preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, and (2) facilitating the orderly and efficient flow of legitimate trade and travel. CBP’s supporting missions include interdicting illegal drugs and other contraband; apprehending individuals who are attempting to enter the United States illegally; inspecting inbound and outbound people, vehicles, and cargo; enforcing all laws of the United States at the border; protecting U.S. agricultural and economic interests from harmful pests and diseases; regulating and facilitating international trade; collecting import duties; and enforcing U.S. trade laws. There are 317 official ports of entry into the United States. Each port can be composed of one or more individual facilities, such as airports, seaports, or land ports where CBP officers process arriving passengers. The port of Buffalo, New York, for example, has airport, seaport, and land port inspection facilities while the Port of Detroit has only the facility at the Detroit International Airport. CBP headquarters allocates staff to ports. A Director of Field Operations (DFO) is responsible for port activities within a geographic area and serves as a liaison between port management and headquarters. Within ports with multiple port facilities (that may be spread across a wide area), port directors decide whether officers are assigned to airport, sea port or land port facilities and individual facility managers are responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations. Port directors are also responsible for ensuring that officers are appropriately cross-trained to support the agency’s mission and to allow for flexibility in assigning officers to various inspections functions and locations within a port. Figure 1 shows the Port of Houston/Galveston’s multiple sea ports and one airport. At inspection facilities within airports, CBP officers inspect all international passengers wishing to enter the United States mainly to determine their admissibility into the country. Figure 2 shows inspection stations within the inspection facility at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Dallas, Texas. After entering the inspection area, U.S. citizens (or permanent residents) and foreign nationals are directed to two different lines. Foreign national inspections are more complex than U.S. citizen inspections because the inspecting officer has to be familiar with different nations’ passports and visas and be able to identify fraudulent versions of these documents. In addition, foreign nationals must present the I-94 Form. During this process, the officer asks the foreign national passenger questions, such as his or her residence abroad and while in the United States, and intended length of stay. Generally, CBP takes longer to inspect foreign nationals than U.S. citizens or permanent residents. In addition to questioning the passenger and examining documentation, the officer observes the passenger’s behavior as part of his or her assessment of the passenger’s potential involvement in terrorism, criminal activities, or violation of immigration status. The officer also checks records in a variety of databases as well as any relevant and available intelligence information to identify high-risk passengers. If the CBP officer conducting the primary inspection decides that a passenger requires further scrutiny, then that passenger is referred to another CBP officer who conducts a more in-depth secondary inspection. Secondary inspection can involve additional interviews, document reviews, database queries, communication with other law enforcement agencies, observational techniques, and heightened physical inspections. After primary or secondary inspection, passengers may be subject to baggage inspection if they have items to declare, such as certain food items or currency or if a CBP officer suspects that they may be involved in illegal activity. Otherwise, if the inspecting officer determines passengers have nothing to declare and do not pose a risk, passengers are allowed to pick up their baggage and leave the inspection facility through the exit control area, where a CBP officer ensures that all passengers have undergone all necessary examinations. In any inspection, if the officer determines that certain passengers pose some risk, are engaged in illegal activity, or are otherwise trying to enter the country unlawfully, they may be returned to their originating country or detained for further legal proceedings. CBP calculates average daily wait times for an airport based on an average of the wait times of all flights that arrive on that day. Because it is an average, this calculation does not represent the wait times for each individual flight. In addition, the wait time recorded for an individual flight does not represent the amount of time that each individual passenger must wait for primary inspection. CBP calculates passenger wait time for individual flights as the time elapsed from the arrival of the first passenger on a flight into the inspection facility to the completion of primary inspection for 98 percent of the passengers on the flight. For example, on a flight that CBP records as having a wait time of 45 minutes, the first passenger to enter the inspection facility may be able to pass through the primary inspection area in less than 10 minutes, while the last 2 percent of passengers may wait more than an hour, because they arrived later to the inspection facility or were mixed in line with other flights. Figure 3 illustrates the steps arriving passengers take after they deplane until they exit the federal inspection facility and highlights the components of this process that CBP measures as passenger wait times. As illustrated in the figure, the wait time CBP calculates for primary passenger inspection is divided into two components: (1) the time spent waiting in line at the inspection facility and (2) the length of time of the primary inspection. This measurement is focused on primary inspection and does not include the time for passengers to deplane and walk to the inspection area before the primary inspection and also does not include the time needed for passengers to retrieve baggage and exit the inspection facility after the primary inspection. In addition, this measurement does not take into account time passengers may have to spend in secondary inspection. Prior to September 11, Congress had imposed wait time standards on the INS for processing international passengers. Congress enacted legislation in 1990 requiring INS to process incoming international passengers within 45 minutes. Although the legislation was not specific as to how INS should measure the 45 minutes, INS originally interpreted this requirement to include time spent in line in the inspections facility and the time for primary inspection—-the two components measured by CBP. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Protection Act of 2002 repealed the 45- minute standard as a requirement for processing international passengers. It added a provision requiring that staffing levels estimated by CBP in workforce staffing models be based on a goal of providing immigration services within 45 minutes. The amount of time passengers from international locations have to wait before completing CBP inspections to enter the United States varies within individual airports and across the 20 airports at which CBP records wait times. Although wait times vary across airports, on average, CBP processed passengers within 45 minutes during the 2-month period for which data were available. Nonetheless, within a single airport, CBP has recorded wait times for individual flights as long as 5 hours for passengers to complete primary airport inspections and 15 of the 20 airports had one percent or more of their international flights exceed 60 minutes for processing international passengers through primary inspection. Based on our observations and analysis of wait time data, as well as our discussions with airport and airline officials, we concluded that the primary factors affecting wait time are passenger volume, the number of inspection stations available at an airport, and the number of CBP officers available to conduct inspections. However, none of the three factors, in isolation, had a decisive effect on passenger wait times. In January 2005, CBP began using its current methodology for recording average daily wait times for international arriving flights at 20 of the 285 airports that receive international air traffic. This calculation is an average of the wait times of all flights that come in that day. Because it is an average, this calculation does not represent the wait time for each individual flight. In addition, the wait time recorded for an individual flight does not represent the amount of time that each individual passenger must wait for primary inspection. For example, on a flight that CBP records as having a wait time of 45 minutes, the first passenger to enter the inspection facility may be able to pass through the primary inspection area in less than 10 minutes while the last 2 percent of passengers may wait more than an hour because they arrived later to the inspection facility or were mixed in line with other flights. Figure 4 illustrates average daily wait times at 20 international airports based on the average time required for the 98th percentile passenger to complete primary inspection at each airport (this applies to figures 4 through 8) and shows that average wait times at 19 of the 20 airports for which CBP maintained data were 40 minutes or less. Airline officials we spoke to cautioned that this data on wait times was not recorded during the peak June through September time periods. The officials stated that wait times recorded during the summer months may be significantly higher than those recorded during off-peak periods. Generally, the longer of the two components of wait time calculated by CBP is the time spent by passengers waiting in line to meet with a CBP officer. According to CBP officials and our own observations, the time spent by the passenger in the primary inspection station communicating directly with the CBP officer is rarely more than 5 minutes, with inspections for U.S. citizens lasting approximately 1 to 2 minutes and for foreign nationals from 3 to 5 minutes. CBP officials told us that if the officer conducting the primary inspection thinks it is taking an unreasonable amount of time given the nature of the inspection and the capacity of the secondary inspection area, he or she will refer the passenger to secondary inspection to allow for a more thorough examination of the passenger without unnecessarily holding up other travelers. While the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Protection Act removed the 45 minute standard as a requirement for processing international passengers through inspection, it added a provision specifying that staffing levels estimated by CBP in workforce models be based upon the goal of providing immigrations services within 45minutes. As shown in the figure above, only Miami International Airport has an average wait time of over 45 minutes.