The United States and the Caribbean Community’s security agency have signed a biometric data-sharing arrangement that the Department of Homeland Security describes as its first multilateral agreement of the kind, aimed at screening travellers and applicants who may pose security or immigration risks.
The Biometric Data Sharing Partnership Memorandum of Cooperation was signed in Washington by Rob Law, DHS Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans, and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Jones, executive director of the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security, known as IMPACS, the bloc’s coordinating body for crime and security matters. The ceremony, hosted at the Embassy of Saint Kitts and Nevis, drew representatives of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, along with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and officials from the State Department and the White House Homeland Security Council.
The memorandum establishes a framework for automated queries and exchanges of data to support the screening, vetting, and investigation of individuals who may pose risks to the United States or to CARICOM members. A particular focus is the Eastern Caribbean’s citizenship-by-investment programs, under which foreign nationals can acquire citizenship through qualifying investments. A US presidential proclamation has warned that purchased citizenship can be used to bypass travel restrictions or conceal identity and assets, and imposes visa restrictions on some citizenship-by-investment nationals; the State Department said the new arrangement closes a critical gap in the Western Hemisphere’s security architecture by strengthening vetting around those programs, while leaving visa authorities unchanged.
“The signing of this memorandum of cooperation marks DHS’s first multilateral biometric information-sharing arrangement,” Law said. “This will strengthen cooperation between DHS and CARICOM IMPACS on border security and immigration vetting.”
The agreement lands in a region already tightening the identity infrastructure around its investment-citizenship offerings, with Saint Kitts and Nevis setting a deadline for mandatory biometrics in its citizenship program, and building identity-based travel links of its own, as Guyana and Barbados opened passport-free travel on national ID cards.
The two sides aim to have the partnership operating by the end of the calendar year, moving from framework to automated exchanges within months of signature.
Sources: DHS, US State Department
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By Cass Kennedy
