CBP Brings Simplified Arrival to Trio of Land Borders in Maine

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is bringing its Simplified Arrival program to three land border crossings in Maine. The face-based screening system is now being used at pedestrian lanes at the Houlton, Jackman, and Calais Ports of Entry.

With Simplified Arrival, travelers will first have their photo taken at an inspection point. After that, a CBP agent will scan that person’s travel documents so the system can match the new photo to a passport or visa photo already stored in a government database. Those who cannot be matched with facial recognition will be referred to an agent for a manual review process.

The biometric scan is required for most foreign nationals, and may replace the need for fingerprint identification in many cases. US citizens and select non-citizens can opt out of the facial recognition program, in which case they will similarly need to complete the more traditional manual inspection. The photos of foreign nationals will be stored indefinitely in a Department of Homeland Security database. The photos of US citizens will be stored for 12 hours before being deleted.

The Maine news continues CBP’s ongoing rollout of the Simplified Arrival program. The organization has steadily been expanding the scope of the program at the country’s Northern and Southern land borders in the past few years, and recently installed Simplified Arrival tech at the Sweetgrass and Eastport crossings in Idaho. Face-based screening is also available at the Lynden, Point Roberts, and Sumas crossings in Washington, the Detroit crossing in Michigan, and at all points of entry in New York.

Simplified Arrival has already been used to process more than 113 million travelers at air, sea, and land borders. CBP claimed that it has now used the system to catch 1,050 imposters who were trying to enter the US with someone else’s travel documents.

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December 8, 2021 – by Eric Weiss