Leo Hohmann – Leo’s Newsletter Oct 27, 2025

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its final rule in the Federal Registry last week expanding the use of biometrics at the nation’s borders. In the process, the government formalized what had been years in the making: a full-scale biometric tracking system to photograph and monitor every non-citizen who enters or leaves the U.S. And it admits many citizens will get caught up in the dragnet, too.

If Joe Biden had implemented such an Orwellian system conservatives would be screaming from the rafters. As it stands, there’s nary a peep nor a squeak being heard from the right.

The measure takes effect December 26 and authorizes Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to photograph “all aliens” at all ports of entry and departure, and “any other point of departure,” according to the website Biometric Update.

Below is an excerpt from the article.

CBP and the Department of Homeland Security call it an “operational modernization.” Civil-liberties groups call it a sweeping expansion of government surveillance. Regardless of the label, it completes the long-delayed “biometric entry-exit” system Congress first ordered in 1996 and repeatedly demanded after September 11.

The new rule removes prior pilot limits and age exemptions, paving the way for a nationwide network of facial-recognition checkpoints at every border interface the agency controls.

Until now, CBP’s biometric operations have been patchwork. At airports, the agency’s “Simplified Arrival” program already photographs nearly every foreign traveler upon entry, comparing the live image against passport and visa databases.

But exits were another story. Land and sea departures were largely unmonitored, and air-exit facial scans existed only at a handful of airports. The new regulation ends that fragmentation, empowering CBP to photograph all non-citizens leaving the country as well.

By eliminating old limits such as a 15-airport cap and an age exemption for those under 14 and over 79, the new rule removes the last formal barriers to universal coverage. DHS says the expansion will strengthen border security, reduce visa overstays, and “close information gaps” in identifying those who enter and fail to leave when required.

In its public statements, DHS has emphasized efficiency, saying that “photographing travelers at entry and exit allows CBP to verify identities within seconds, reducing document fraud and streamlining inspections.”

Every image captured under the new system feeds CBP’s Traveler Verification Service (TVS), which is a massive cloud-based facial-recognition architecture that cross-checks live photos against government databases. When it verifies a traveler’s identity, it transmits the result to a CBP officer’s screen and stores the image and match data.

For non-citizens, those images can be retained for up to seventy-five years in DHS’s central biometric repository, the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT).

The new rule states DHS “may require an alien to be photographed when departing the United States to determine the alien’s identity or for other lawful purposes.” The phrasing gives the government extraordinary latitude in deciding where and how photographs are taken.

In practice, cameras will capture faces wherever CBP has an operational presence at passport control booths, boarding gates, vehicle lanes, pedestrian crossings, cruise terminals, and even small private docks.

Officials have acknowledged that “a few travelers depart the country from locations that are not designated ports of entry,” such as private airfields and marinas. The rule now covers them too.

CBP says the intent is to close loopholes exploited by travelers who might otherwise exit without inspection, but the net result is an authority broad enough to extend biometric surveillance to almost any international departure site.

At airports, implementation will likely resemble what already exists in the Simplified Arrival program. Cameras installed at boarding gates automatically photograph every passenger as they approach the jet bridge. The image is transmitted to CBP’s verification service, matched to passport or visa records, and the traveler is cleared to board if the face and documents align.

The rule applies to “aliens,” but the cameras do not distinguish citizens from non-citizens in real time. At airports and land ports, shared cameras often photograph everyone passing through, citizens included.

CBP insists that citizen participation is voluntary and that its systems automatically delete citizen images within twelve hours once nationality is confirmed. The agency says it posts signage at every location informing citizens they may opt out and present their passport for manual verification instead.

A 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concluded that CBP’s privacy notices were inconsistent across airports and that airline contractors were often unsure how to process an opt-out. CBP’s own metrics suggest opt-outs are exceedingly rare: about 0.28 percent of air-exit travelers, 0.13 percent of air entrants, and 0.21 percent of pedestrians.

If the system misidentifies a citizen as a non-citizen – or fails to find a matching passport photo – the image can be retained longer than 12 hours. In its own testing, CBP reported false-non-match rates of up to 3 percent, translating into thousands of misclassified captures daily at full national scale.

Civil-liberties groups argue that even temporary retention undermines the promise of voluntariness.

Read the rest of the article at Biometric Update.

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