IDENT/IAFIS: The Batres Case and the Status of the Integration Project (Cont)
Next, the report details the handling of the Batres case by immigration authorities. We discuss the history of Batres' entries into the United States in January 2002, his criminal and deportation history, and his outstanding arrest warrant in Oregon for possession of dangerous drugs which resulted in a lookout for him being placed in IDENT. We then examine why the Border Patrol failed to discover Batres' criminal or deportation history during either of his apprehensions in January 2002. Finally, the report describes the current status of the efforts to integrate IDENT and IAFIS.
II. BACKGROUND ON FBI AND INS AUTOMATED FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION DATABASES
United States immigration authorities have long recognized the need for an automated fingerprint identification system to quickly determine the immigration and criminal histories of aliens apprehended at or near the border. More than one million aliens are apprehended each year attempting to enter the United States illegally. Many of these aliens are apprehended in large groups, and the Border Patrol lacks the resources to detain all of them for extended periods of time. Consequently, the vast majority are voluntarily returned to their country of origin, mostly to Mexico, without any criminal charges being filed.
At the same time, immigration authorities need to be able to quickly determine which of these aliens should be detained for prosecution based on multiple illegal entries, reentering the U.S. after a prior deportation, alien smuggling, a current arrest warrant, or an aggravated criminal record. Historically, in order to identify which individuals to detain for possible prosecution or deportation, the INS had to rely on the names provided by the apprehended aliens and check them against its databases or other paper records. This method was ineffective because aliens often use false or different names. Also, many aliens have similar names, and spelling errors result in problems identifying individuals accurately.
Therefore, in 1989 Congress provided the initial funding for the INS to develop an automated fingerprint identification system that eventually became known as IDENT. While one of the main purposes of IDENT was to identify and prosecute repeat immigration offenders, another significant purpose was to identify criminal aliens who should be detained. The 1989 conference report described Congress's rationale for funding the project:
Illegal immigration continues at alarming rates, and criminal alien statistics provided by the INS indicate that a growing proportion of aliens are drug smugglers, known criminals, and suspected terrorists. Emerging technology in the area of automated fingerprint identification systems has the potential for providing empirical data to clearly define the problem of recidivism as well as immediately identify those criminal aliens who should remain in the custody of the INS (emphasis added). 5
At about the same time, the FBI began to overhaul its paper-based fingerprint card system, which it had maintained since the 1920s, to create a new automated fingerprint identification system that would allow electronic searches for fingerprint matches. Since the 1920s the FBI's Identification Division has maintained a central repository of ten-prints of criminal offenders' fingerprints. In 1967, the FBI created the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to provide a national database of information on wanted individuals and stolen articles, vehicles, guns, and license plates. Fingerprint information is submitted by participating federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The Interstate Identification Index (III), which contains criminal history information on arrests and dispositions, was added to NCIC in 1983.
In February 1990, the NCIC Advisory Policy Board recommended that the FBI update its paper-based fingerprint identification system and create a new automated system, which eventually became known as the FBI's Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). During 1990 and 1991, the INS and FBI met to discuss possible coordination of their planned automated fingerprint identification systems. Memoranda summarizing some of these meetings stated that the INS and FBI were coordinating the development of an integrated automated fingerprint identification system to determine if the integrated system could satisfy the INS's needs. The memoranda also included preliminary diagrams and narratives of how the FBI's IAFIS and the INS's proposed system could be linked in an overall automated fingerprint identification system network. There also was discussion of how to ensure common high-quality fingerprint image and electronic transmission standards for fingerprints and identification data so that they could be transmitted among different fingerprint identification systems.
From the start, the INS and the FBI recognized that integration of their separate automated fingerprint identification systems would benefit both agencies. An integrated system would reduce the likelihood that INS would release an alien who had a serious criminal record and prior deportations. It also would enable federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities to search fingerprints from a crime scene against an immigration database of illegal border crossers, especially if ten prints are taken.
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF SEPARATE FBI AND INS DATABASES
During the early planning meetings, the INS and FBI discussed whether the FBI would be willing to store fingerprint records of criminal and non-criminal aliens or whether the INS should establish a separate system if the FBI system could not support all of the INS's requirements. In the discussions, both the INS and the FBI believed that the INS would not need to check all apprehended aliens against the FBI's databases. Rather, they believed that the INS would check only those aliens the INS identified as potential criminals. They assumed that the FBI's IAFIS could handle only a small volume of INS requests within a quick response time. The INS emphasized that a fast response time was critical because the INS could not detain large numbers of apprehended aliens for long periods of time while waiting for responses to criminal checks.
An early difference of opinion between the INS and the FBI was whether the INS should take two fingerprints or ten fingerprints from the aliens it apprehended. The FBI, along with state and local law enforcement agencies, believed that the INS should take ten fingerprints so that they could be matched against ten-fingerprint records in the law enforcement databases or any latent fingerprints obtained at crime scenes. Because fingerprints at crime scenes may be from any finger, the long-established law enforcement standard requires that officers take prints from all ten fingers. But the INS believed that taking ten fingerprints of all apprehended aliens would take too long and adversely affect its ability to carry out its mission, because large numbers of aliens would have to be detained for increased lengths of time while waiting for fingerprint checks.
Between 1991 and 1993, the INS operated a pilot Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) project in the San Diego Border Patrol Sector, and in 1994 Congress allocated funding for the INS's automated system. During an April 1994 meeting regarding the deployment of IDENT, the FBI told the INS that without additional development time and money, which the FBI did not have, the FBI's planned IAFIS system could not meet the INS's need to handle a high volume of fingerprints (for more than one million aliens apprehended annually), and the INS needed a quick response time (two minutes or less) for each encounter. Further, the FBI said that the alternative of searching and matching the two fingerprints captured by IDENT against the FBI's planned IAFIS ten-fingerprint database would require much more computer power than the FBI had in order to provide the response time that the INS needed.
Therefore, in 1994 the INS decided to move forward with implementation of its separate IDENT system, independent from the FBI's IAFIS system. In order to meet its own needs, the FBI decided that its automated fingerprint system, IAFIS, would contain all ten fingerprints and provide a response in two hours for high priority electronic requests and a longer time for lower priority and non-electronic requests.
IDENT was first deployed in 1994. As noted above, IDENT matches the fingerprints of the detained individual against the corresponding fingerprints of all individuals in two central IDENT databases: the recidivist database (now referred to as the apprehension database) and the lookout database. The apprehension database documents the apprehensions of illegal border crossers, reflecting the time, date, and circumstances of each recorded apprehension. As of January 2004, approximately 6 million different aliens were enrolled in the IDENT apprehension database.
A primary purpose of the IDENT database is to advise the processing agent as to the number of times that an alien has been apprehended for illegal entry. Because of resource limitations, including detention space and prosecutorial resources, Border Patrol sectors or stations, in conjunction with the local United States Attorney's Office (USAO), set a "threshold" number of apprehensions for illegal entry that would be required before detained aliens are prosecuted for Entry Without Inspection (8 USC § 1325). Generally, unless that threshold is reached, or there are aggravating factors associated with the aliens' apprehensions (such as persistent false statements, combativeness, indications that the alien has been previously incarcerated, or indications that the alien is a smuggler), Border Patrol agents voluntarily return aliens to their country without further inquiries of other immigration or criminal databases.
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