US Customs and Border Protection Program, photographing everyone leaving the United States by car

Wired learned that the American Customs and Border Protection Program logs into everyone who leaves the country through a vehicle by taking pictures at each passenger’s crossing point and matching their faces with a passport, visa or travel document.

Upgraded travelers’ documents can be used to track how many people self-replace, or voluntarily leave the U.S., and the Trump administration strongly encourages illegal people in the country.

The CBP specifically told Wired that in response to the institution’s investigation, it plans to reflect its current plan in development (the person who comes into the United States to the travel document) for the outbound lanes to Canada and Mexico. The institution currently has no system to monitor people leaving the country by car.

“Although we are still working on the out-of-station lane, we will eventually expand into the area,” CBP spokesman Jessica Turner told Wired.

Turner was unable to provide a timeline on when the CBP began monitoring people leaving the country by car.

She told Wired that the CBP is currently matching photos entering the country, i.e. “All recorded photos, such as passports, visas, green cards, etc.,” adding that all “external/non-U.S. citizens encounter alien/non-U.S. citizens encounter alien/non-U.S. citizens encountering crossings” are stored by the CBP. “Escape photos can be used for subsequent crossings to verify identity,” Turner said. She did not specify whether CBP can integrate other photos or data sources in the future.

When asked, Turner said it was not clear that the purpose of the face-to-face matching system is to track self-driven. “But it’s not that it will not develop in the future with self-extended ways,” Turner said, adding that the goal of the outbound system is to “biometrically confirm leaving the United States.” She said this is different from the purpose of tracking people entering the United States, which also takes into account the “purpose and intention” of entering the country.

Wired reported this week that CBP recently asked tech companies to send them about how to ensure everyone enters the country by car, including two to three lines, will be shot immediately and matched with their travel documents. CBP has been working hard to do this. The results of the 152-day test conducted by the system took place at the Anzalduas border intersection between Mexico and Texas, indicating that these cameras captured photos of everyone in the car that met the “verification requirements” and encountered only 61% of the time.

Currently, neither CBP, immigration nor customs enforcement has any open self-substitution tools to track, except for the ICE app that allows people to tell agencies when leaving the country.

Last month, ICE announced it would pay software companies $30 million to build a tool called Immigration Agency that would give the agency a “near-real-time visibility” of self-substitutes from the United States, with the aim of publishing a contract a few days later with the aim of accurately counting how many people there were.