The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report (.pdf) this month revealing that, even as development costs settle, US-VISIT's overall price tag is spiraling up "without any accompanying explanation of the reasons," the report said.
In an interview with Wired News, Randy Hite, the author of the GAO report, described US-VISIT as a plane flying aimlessly. "We're asking for a pilot to program in a destination," Hite said. "Instead, we have it on autopilot with no destination."
US-VISIT collects a digital photo and two digital fingerprints from incoming visitors to the United States, and checks each traveler against scores of government watchlists stored in a hodgepodge of backend databases. The program was launched in January 2004 in an effort to secure the border from terrorists.
The system is at hundreds of airports, seaports and land border crossing across the country, but it is largely a one-way process: missing from the program is a way to verify that a visitor has left the United States, except for a limited pilot program at 12 airports and two seaports where visitors are required to scan their fingerprints on their way out of the country.
In a hearing at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security earlier this month, chairman Rep. David Price (D-North Carolina) expressed concern that the DHS still has no "meaningful exit capacity" for the US-VISIT program.
"The total resources provided to this program would exceed $2 billion over the five years since 9/11," Price said, counting $462 million in funding requested for 2008. "But we still have no way to know if people visiting the U.S. have left, even though we know that millions of undocumented aliens in this country are so-called 'overstays.' This ignorance is both a security gap and a key problem for immigration reform."
The DHS' Robery Mocny, acting director of US-VISIT, agreed that the inability to track exits is a major weakness of the system, but talked up plans to further improve entrance security. In 2008, the DHS plans to use $228 million to deploy "ten fingerprint capture" equipment at ports of entry, upgrade to automated biometric identification systems and increase compatibility with the Department of Justice's fingerprint system.
The GAO report focused on the growing costs of the program and its lack of oversight, and at the recent hearing lawmakers slammed DHS for not providing Congress with a clear strategy going forward.
Congress has been waiting since 2005 for the DHS to provide a strategic plan that defines US-VISIT's mission. Simpler spending plans have also been late: a 2006 expenditure plan was delivered almost 11 months after Congress appropriated $336.6 million for the program, and a FY2007 expenditure plan is four months overdue.
Congress has withheld $200 million of the $362.5 million appropriated for the program this year, pending receipt of the spending plan -- not the first time it has withheld funding for the program while waiting for the DHS to get its act together.
"I've had it," rumbled Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky), the ranking minority member on the subcommittee, at the hearing. "We've withheld funds and released them, dribbled them out long enough. Face up to it. Give us the plan. If you can't do the plan, scrap US-VISIT.... How can we do our job if you won't tell us where you're going?"
Rogers set a March 16 deadline for US-VISIT to supply the strategic plan and the spending plan for 2007.
Despite the congressional pummeling, Anna Hinken, a spokeswoman for US-VISIT, said Friday the program is proceeding apace, and dismissed the GAO report as outdated information from six months ago. "Everything is on track," Hinken said.
"We have biometric data for over 80 million foreign visitors," Hinken said. "We've already denied entry to almost 2,000 people based on the biometrics alone."
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