Firebug4

The article has some interesting "facts" in it that should have been checked. US Customs and Border Protection currently does not use retina scanners in Ports of Entry. The advance clearance for multiple entries the article refers to is ESTA. ESTA does not exempt you from the inspection process when applying for entry at a Port of Entry. It sounds as if the Port was unprepared for an arrival of that many people. This appears to have been compounded by issues with the computer system that records entries. There are procedures to follow that can mitigate wait times but they usually are approved as a rule. CBP is very sensitive to wait times. They must be reported every few hours and passengers can get real time information on the CBP website. Wait times that build over a certain limit must be explained by the supervisor through the chain of command. I would be interested in learning how many officers were on hand at the port and if it was an expected arrival. 2000 people are not that many passengers and the process described in the article is not any different, or extended than the normal process that is completed on every arrival. Airports routinely complete that many people in far less time when the computers are operating correctly. I can tell you computers are great when they work. However, when they go down you have to return to the manual way of doing things. We have many officers that were not employed before the computer systems so they have never used the manual way except for maybe once or twice during training which may have been years prior to them needing to do it for real.

FB