To begin with, it wasn’t until the last few years that technology was up to the task: a 2009 pilot program at airports ended up being scrapped, experts say, because the process was too clunky to use nation-wide and would have required too many additional security staffers, among other reasons. There are also questions about how such a system could be implemented while still keeping the flow of international passengers moving at high-volume airports in the U.S.
Still, technology is beginning to catch up, and this appears to be on the horizon for airports at least: A group of DHS officials who testified before the House Homeland Security Committee this summer said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has called for biometric exit procedures to be in place starting in high-volume airports in 2018.
When it comes to implementing the system at land border crossings, things become even more complicated: though the lanes to enter the U.S. at the border with Mexico are equipped to handle a new system, the “exit” lanes to Mexico aren’t—and trying to put a biometric system in place for those lanes leaving the U.S. would create massive delays (or require construction of hundreds more lanes over various border crossings).
“For the land environment, such an approach to biometric exit would require building and staffing of hundreds of outbound lanes at land ports of entry, many of them operational 24-hours a day,” the DHS officials said in a statement before their congressional testimony.
