TAMPA, Fla. — A Coast Guard effort to collect and analyze biometric data gathered at sea has expanded and will be made into an official program next year, said a senior technologist from the service.
The Mona Pass, a 90-mile stretch of water between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, has seen a 75 percent drop in the number of interdictions from 2006 to 2008, said Thomas Amerson of the Coast Guard’s research and development center.
“I would like to think, and those at Coast Guard headquarters would like to think, that biometrics has had a tremendous impact on the migrant flow in the Mona Pass,” Amerson said at the Biometrics Consortium conference
The marine biometric identification program began in November 2006. The goal was to see if Coast Guard crew members could collect fingerprints in harsh maritime conditions, transmit them back to shore-based databases, determine if there were any criminals among the would-be migrants, and sort out who should be immediately repatriated to the Dominican Republic and who should be taken into custody for prosecution.
Of the 1,981 migrants encountered, the Coast Guard successfully collected data from 1,952. About 23 percent of them had matches in criminal databases.
So far, 155 individuals have been brought ashore for prosecution. There is a 100 percent conviction rate so far, Amerson said.
Without deterrence, the program would not be a success, Amerson said. Every interdiction and prosecution is publicized in both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Previously, Dominicans were repatriated to their homeland with no consequences. They were free to attempt another dangerous crossing in homemade wooden boats. There were only about two prosecutions per year prior to 2006.
They have to know that “not only are they at risk coming across water in these wooden homemade boats … there’s a risk that we are going to know who they are and we are going to prosecute,” he said.
Cutters plying waters off southern Florida have now been outfitted with the systems.
The challenge was to create readers that could function at night, often during rain, and be portable so crew members could move among the detainees on crowded decks and collect the data. Sometimes there are swells and both the crew and the migrants are “airborne,” Amerson said.
Because of these extreme conditions, the program is only collecting two fingerprints. US-VISIT, the Department of Homeland Security program that collects biometric data from foreign visitors, has moved to 10 fingerprints, and Amerson said the Coast Guard would like to follow suit.
The installation of digital Inmarsat radios is one recent upgrade. They can now receive an answer on a subject in about 20 minutes. That’s plenty of time since the Coast Guard has 40 hours to repatriate the Dominicans that aren’t going to be prosecuted.
Other DHS programs are taking notice of the Coast Guard’s success. Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection are both developing their own mobile biometrics collections systems, he noted.