CBP’s Biometric Tech Catches Two More Imposters at Dulles Airport

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has caught two more imposters at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. Both women were trying to enter the country from Cameroon via Belgium, and presented US passports when they arrived at their primary customs checkpoint.

From there, they were flagged as potential imposters with the help of CBP’s Simplified Arrival facial recognition system. Simplified Arrival noticed a discrepancy between the images in the passports and the new photos that were taken as part of the border screening process, and referred both women for a secondary inspection. At that point, the imposters admitted that the passports were purchased, and that they were not the true owners of their travel documents.

Neither woman will face any criminal charges, though they have been forced to leave the country and CBP has seized the US passports they were using. The passports themselves were genuine, but had originally been issued to actual US citizens.

This is the third time that imposters have been caught at Dulles airport in the past few months. In October, CBP spotted an imposter traveling with a Senegalese passport, and the organization would later arrest a Minnesota resident (and wanted fugitive) trying to use his brother’s passport in January. CBP also caught imposters in Toronto and Vancouver after deploying Simplified Arrival at Preclearance locations in Canada.

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April 12, 2021 – by Eric Weiss