DHS Inspector General Releases Report on CBP One App, Highlights Mismanagement
September 04, 2024
On August 19, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report critiquing the CBP One mobile app. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the app has been used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to continue the administration’s open-borders agenda and mass process illegal aliens into the country, while avoiding the bad optics of millions of people entering between ports of entry. Perhaps most concerning, the report found that, along with facilitating illegal immigration, improper use of the CBP One app may be contributing to immigration fraud.
In January 2023, CBP implemented the appointment scheduling feature for the CBP One app. This feature allows illegal aliens seeking to enter the United States to submit unverified information to CBP and schedule appointments at one of eight ports of entry (POEs) along the southern border. Since then, more than 765,000 illegal aliens have scheduled appointments to present themselves at POEs to be processed and released into the country. Venezuelan, Cuban, Mexican, and Haitian nationals represent the top nationalities processed after arrival for their appointment.
The report identified several issues with the app that open it to exploitation by illegal aliens. The OIG determined that CBP did not consider design flaws in the app, nor did it implement adequate infrastructure to support the increase in traffic. For instance, a security feature designed to verify that a user is a real person and not a bad actor using a fraudulent identity to obtain an appointment by scanning photographs submitted by the user was quickly overwhelmed. The sheer volume of submissions made it impossible for CBP’s third-party contractor to perform scans of every photo. As a result, the contractor now only conducts photo scans if an appointment is available, giving bad actors the chance to submit fraudulent information that is not flagged because scans are not conducted and still receive an appointment through a separate application.
https://www.fairus.org/blog/2024/09/04/dhs-inspector-general-releases-report-cbp-one-app-highlights-mismanagement
