Homeland Security Promises Plan to ID Migrants Who Overstay Visas

The Department of Homeland Security will present its plans within weeks for a biometric and RFID data system to track when immigrants leave the United States, a department official told a House Homeland Security subcommittee Tuesday.

An exit system to track who is leaving the country and when has been sought since before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. DHS officials, including Secretary Janet Napolitano, have agreed with the need for such a program but have previously said it would be too costly.

Arizona Star
March 7, 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C.


John Cohen the department's deputy counterterrorism coordinator, did not discuss the cost in his testimony about immigrants who overstay visas. He said the department's report to Congress will explain how DHS plans to better determine who has overstayed.


The criminal case against Amine El Khalifi, 29, of Alexandria, Va., accused in an alleged bomb plot against the U.S. Capitol, has renewed the debate about how the U.S. government routinely fails to track millions of foreign visitors who remain in the country longer than they are allowed.


El Khalifi was arrested in a parking lot, wearing what he thought was an explosive-laden suicide vest. He had been living illegally in the United States for 12 years.


The Obama administration doesn't consider deporting people whose only offense is overstaying a visa a priority currently. It has focused immigration enforcement efforts on people who have committed serious crimes and are considered a threat to public and/or national security.


Cohen said improvements in how data from immigrants is now collected and stored has made it much easier for law enforcement to identify visa overstays and determine if they pose a threat.


Cohen said Tuesday that more than 37,000 people who overstayed visas were deported from 2009 to 2011.

Last year, ICE reviewed a backlog of about 1.6 million suspected overstay cases involving people who had come to the U.S. since 2004. The review concluded that about half of those people have either left the country or applied to change their immigration status.


The cases of about 2,700 people were given further review.


For the more than 797,000 others whose cases were not reviewed further, DHS officials said their overstay status was noted in electronic files in case any of them commit crimes in the future or otherwise become a priority to be deported.


Some estimates suggest that as many as half of the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants have overstayed their visas.