US-VISIT’s goals are to (1) enhance the security of U.S. citizens and visitors, (2) facilitate legitimate travel and trade, (3) ensure the integrity of the U.S. immigration system, and (4) protect the privacy of visitors. The program is to achieve these goals by collecting, maintaining, and sharing information on certain foreign nationals who enter and exit the United States; identifying foreign nationals who (1) have overstayed or violated the terms of their visit; (2) can receive, extend, or adjust their immigration status; or (3) should be apprehended or detained by law enforcement officials; detecting fraudulent travel documents, verifying visitor identity, and determining visitor admissibility through the use of biometrics (digital fingerprints and a digital photograph); and facilitating information sharing and coordination within the immigration and border management community. A series of statutes that date back more than a decade have provided a framework for developing and deploying US-VISIT entry and exit capabilities. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) required the Attorney General to develop an automated system to record the departure of every foreign national from the United States and then match it to the individual’s arrival record. Subsequently, section 2(a) of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act (DMIA) of 2000 amended the original entry-exit provisions of IIRIRA and required the Attorney General to implement an integrated entry and exit data system for foreign nationals. More specifically, DMIA required an electronic system that would provide access to and integrate foreign national arrival and departure data that are authorized or required to be created or collected under law and are in an electronic format in Department of Justice or Department of State databases, such as those used at POEs and consular offices. The system, as described in DMIA, is to compare available arrival records with available departure records, allow online search procedures to identify foreign nationals who may have overstayed their authorized period of admission, and use available data to produce a report of arriving and departing foreign nationals. DMIA also required the implementation of the system at airports and seaports by December 31, 2003, at the 50 highest- volume land POEs by December 31, 2004, and at all remaining POEs by December 31, 2005. Subsequent laws added specific biometric requirements. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, as amended, required the development and certification of a technology standard by January 26, 2003, including appropriate biometric identifiers that can be used to verify the identity of persons applying for a U.S. visa or seeking to enter the United States pursuant to a visa, for the purposes of conducting background checks, confirming identity, and ensuring that a person has not received a visa under a different name. The act also required DHS and the Department of State to focus on the utilization of biometric technology and the development of tamper-resistant documents readable at POEs for the integrated entry and exit data system. The Visa Waiver Permanent Program Act required DHS to develop and implement a fully automated system to control entry and exit of aliens at airports and seaports who enter the United States under the Visa Waiver Program. The act was subsequently amended to require, not later than August 3, 2008, an exit system that uses biometric information and records every alien participating in the Visa Waiver Program that departs the United States by air. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 requires the collection of biometric exit data for all categories of individuals required to provide biometric entry data under US-VISIT, regardless of the POE where they entered the United States. The law also required DHS to develop a plan to accelerate the full implementation of the program. The Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 further addressed the Visa Waiver Program by restricting DHS’s authority to admit additional countries into the Visa Waiver Program until the department, among other things, was able to certify that it could verify the departure of not less than 97 percent of foreign nationals who exit from U.S. airports and had incorporated biometric indicators (such as fingerprints) into the air exit system by June 30, 2009. US-VISIT supports a series of homeland security-related mission processes that cover hundreds of millions of foreign national travelers who enter and leave the United States at about 300 air, sea, and land POEs. These five processes are described in the next section and depicted in figure 1. Pre-entry: the process of evaluating a traveler’s eligibility for required travel documents, enrolling travelers in automated inspection programs, and prescreening travelers entering the United States. Entry: the process of determining a traveler’s admissibility into the United States at air, sea, or land POEs. Status management: the process of managing and monitoring the changes and extensions of the visits of lawfully admitted nonimmigrant foreign nationals to ensure that they adhere to the terms of their admission and that they notify appropriate government entities when they do not. Exit: the process of collecting information on travelers departing the United States. Analysis: the process of continuously screening against watch lists of individuals enrolled in US-VISIT for appropriate reporting and action. To support these processes, US-VISIT systems and equipment must exchange data with a variety of other systems, some of which are owned by other agencies. For example, US-VISIT’s Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) collects and stores biometric data about foreign visitors, including information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement information on deported felons and sexual offender registrants, and DHS information on previous criminal histories and previous IDENT enrollments. IDENT connects to a number of different systems, some of which are described here. Arrival and Departure Information System is owned by US-VISIT and stores noncitizen traveler arrival and departure biographic data received from air and sea carrier manifests. It matches entry, immigration status updates, and departure data to provide immigration status, including whether the individual has overstayed his or her authorized period of stay. Consular Consolidated Database is owned by the Department of State and includes information on visa applicants. TECS, formerly known as the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, is owned by CBP and maintains lookout (i.e., watch list) data, interfaces with other agencies’ databases, and is currently used by CBP officers at POEs to verify traveler information and update traveler data. U.S. Coast Guard’s Mona Pass Proof-of-Concept is determining the feasibility of deploying a mobile biometrics identification capability on Coast Guard cutters in the Mona Passage and in the Coast Guard’s South Florida patrol area. Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System is owned by FBI and is the bureau’s automated 10-fingerprint matching system and is electronically connected to all 50 states, as well as some federal agencies. The US-VISIT program has roots in a program known as Entry Exit, which was established by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in 2002 in response to IIRIRA and other relevant legislation. Following the merger of the functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service into DHS in 2003, the program was placed in DHS’s Border and Transportation Security Directorate and renamed US-VISIT. In 2007, US-VISIT was moved to DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. DHS has delivered US-VISIT entry, and evaluated exit, capabilities in a series of increments. As a result, a biometrically enabled entry capability has been fully operational at about 300 air, sea, and land POEs since December 2006 (115 airports, 14 seaports, and 154 of 170 land ports), but an exit capability has yet to be fully deployed. Increment 1 (air and sea entry), Increment 2B (land entry), and Increment 3 (land entry) addressed the deployment of an entry capability, while Increment 1B (air and sea exit) and Increment 2C (land exit) evaluated different alternatives for collecting exit information. The timing and purpose of each increment, as well as the delivery of other significant US-VISIT capabilities, are depicted in figure 2 and described after the figure. Increments 1, 2B, and 3, which largely involved building interfaces among existing systems and enhancing the systems’ capabilities and supporting infrastructure, were delivered sequentially from January 2004 to December 2006. Specifically, in January 2004, the program office began operating most aspects of its planned biometric entry capability at 115 airports and 14 seaports for certain foreign nationals, including those from visa waiver countries (Increment 1). This capability was expanded to the 50 busiest land POEs by December 2004 (Increment 2B) and essentially deployed to 104 remaining land POEs by December 2005 (Increment 3). As of December 2006, the program office was operating this entry capability at 154 of 170 land POEs. According to DHS, US-VISIT entry operations have produced mission value. For example, as of June 2009, the program reported that it had more than 150,000 biometric hits in entry resulting in more than 8,000 people having adverse actions, such as denial of entry, taken against them. Further, about 43,000 leads were referred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration enforcement unit, resulting in 1,691 arrests. Although difficult to demonstrate, officials have also cited the possible deterrence of terrorist entry due to the program’s publicized capability to verify visitor identity at U.S. borders during entry and to match visitors against watch lists of known and suspected terrorists. In parallel with the delivery of entry capabilities, DHS examined the use of technology for recording the exit of travelers in the air, sea, and land environments.