Fergie's Tech Blog

US-VISIT Delays Foreign Airlines

Sara Kehaulani Goo writes in The Washington Post:

A new air-security system designed to track foreign visitors arriving in the United States has mistakenly snagged dozens of crew members of foreign airlines, according to new documents obtained from the Department of Homeland Security.

The manager of an unidentified foreign carrier complained that 35 employees were stopped for 30 minutes to an hour after arriving in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Anchorage and Guam. Another airline said eight crew members had been questioned in Miami, Newark, New York's John F. Kennedy and Los Angeles airports. In each case, carriers indicated that the new program called US-VISIT, which captures digital fingerprints and photographs of all foreigners entering the country, was unable to properly identify the crew members who already have had U.S. background checks.