Hello,

I am not sure if this is the right forum for this, but I wanted to share my experience that I've had with the Global Entry (GOES) / Trusted Traveler Program with regards to enrolling children.

The program has recently lifted it's age restrictions to all ages (previously 14 years) and therefore everyone is eligible to apply to the program. My wife and I are already enrolled and we travel 6-8 times per year internationally, so this program has been great for us. We recently had a baby boy and we wanted to keep using the program going forward as we'll be traveling with him soon.

Our application was conditionally approved and we scheduled the interview at the Philadelphia Airport Customs location. Upon arriving yesterday, we were informed that they had never processed a child this young (9 weeks) and that they had no procedures in place for adding a baby to the system because of the digital fingerprinting requirement.
It was quite comical to have four uniformed, armed customs officers try to figure out how to process this. Everyone was very nice and apologetic, but it was clear that nobody was training on this situation nor had they been informed that the program is now open to everyone.
Long story short, the scanner was not able to pick up the fingerprints and we were told that they will ask their superior officer to override the requirement.

To me, this looks like a case where a change to a program was made without considering the most basic of ramifications. Clearly, a child this young would never travel on it's own until it is older, so why not link the child's global entry to both of it's parents until a certain age when that provision would automatically expire and require a separate account?

This was meant more as an informative post, if anyone plans to enroll a child in GOES under the age of 2-3 years (when I would expect fingerprints to be big enough for the scanner to read them), be forewarned that you will probably be met with some dumbfounded looks and be send home.

Should his enrollment not go through, I will try to recover the enrollment fee, but knowing the government, this will prove challenging.