This will decrease the number of Dominicans who caome here. Yetserday there was an article in the newspapers about the train line in Mexico that Central Americans used to get to the Mexico/U.S. border which has shut down decreasing the number of them arriving. Now if we could do the same with Mexicans and South Americans we would be much better off and could focus on deporting illegals here.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-1114bio ... b01_layout


South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Use of illegal migration route cut by half, Coast Guard says
Officials credit rapid fingerprint check system
By Ruth Morris

Sun-Sentinel.com

1:39 PM EST, November 14, 2007

MIAMI

The number of migrants traveling illegally to the United States through a treacherous sea pass has dropped by half, largely because of a fingerprinting initiative that will expand to South Florida in the spring, Coast Guard officials said Wednesday.

The biometric program began a year ago and has led to the prosecutions of 93 migrants picked up in the Mona Passage - a slip of sea often used by men and women from the Dominican Republic to enter Puerto Rico and then the U.S. mainland, illegally.

Armed with water-resistant, handheld scanners, Coast Guard officials patrolling the pass now collect fingerprints and photographs of migrants they interdict in the Mona Passage. Under a new information sharing arrangement with Homeland Security's US-Visit program, the information is then run against a database of criminals, terror suspects and deportees via satellite hookup. Results are available in less than five minutes.

Knowing that the checks are in place has been a huge deterrent for smugglers, said Rear Adm. David Kunkel, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, at a Miami news conference. So far, the Coast Guard has taken biometric data for 1,285 interdicted migrants, producing matches in 270 cases.

"The biometric processes and increased prosecutions had a significant deterrent effect that directly contributed to the reduction of illegal migration from the Dominican Republic," he said. "The Mona Passage is a treacherous body of water where too many people have died over the years."

The Coast Guard plans to begin using the same technology on cutters patrolling off South Florida in the spring.

Besides identifying criminals, authorities said the program also tells them if an apprehended migrant has been caught trying to enter the United States before, triggering prosecution for a repeated attempt.

US-Visit director Bob Mocny said biometric data gathering would expand as an enforcement tool. In another pilot program, his office is providing background information to three police departments in Texas and Massachusetts.

"These people were trying to hide behind a veil of anonymity," Mocny said of migrants picked up in the Mona Passage. "Biometrics is the way of the future."