CBP uses facial recognition processing to verify whether an international traveler is truly the same person who is entering or departing the United States as their travel documents. A camera will take your photo and match it to a gallery of images from photographs that CBP already has of you from previous U.S. passport photos, U.S. visas or other travel documents. Instead of a CBP agent or airline personnel looking at your travel document, it will be a camera and a computer system that does the matching automatically.
Here's how it works:
- Airlines send a manifest of all the travelers on the international flight to CBP, who then prepares a temporary gallery of existing images of travelers
- Photographs are taken, encrypted, and sent to a cloud-based matching system via a secure connection
- CBP compares the new photo with the gallery, and then the system responds with the identity verification match results
- If there is a match, the traveler may board the flight. If there is no match, the traveler’s documents are screened manually
Read more at the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol page about Biometric Facial Comparison.
