GSN_Apr_FINAL+links

How to improve refugee vetting now – a 9/11
Commission border counsel perspective
Janice Kephart, former
9/11 Commission
border counsel
and partner, IdSP
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2017 /
PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Janice
Kephart, former 9/11 Commission
border counsel and partner
with Identity Strategy Partners, LLP
(IdSP), today issues the following
statement:
“With or without President
Trump’s March 6, 2017 Executive
Order: Protecting the Nation from
Foreign Terrorist Entry, refugee vetting
can be instilled with greater
confidence, enabling the reactivation
of legitimate refugee resettlement.
(Right now, all refugee applications
are suspended by until at
least July 2017). Improvements in
current refugee vetting will require
a language change to current law,
identity enrollment taking place
earlier in the process, and the implementation
of a long-ignored 9/11
Commission recommendation. But
improvement is doable, and now.
So why does the refugee population
present a threat to national
security? The reason is twofold: (1)
intelligence for years has revealed
a terrorist travel tactic of infiltrating
refugee populations for eventual
resettlement into Europe or the
United States, and (2) by legal definition
refugees are displaced persons
with unknown identity. Even
for those with an ID, establishing
its authenticity or trusting its origin
is difficult since by policy, no information
is shared with the home
country, so there is no country of
origin against which to run checks
as in a regular visa referral. Since
the refugee demographic tends to
be anonymous, it is more difficult to
ensure a person is who they say they
are, and then affiliate that identity
with intelligence and other potentially
significant financial or other
data. In short, limited identity and
intelligence information
diminish confidence in
recommendations about
which refugees to accept
for U.S. resettlement.
The program responsible
for vetting refugees
seeking U.S. resettlement
is the United States Refugee
Admissions Program
(USRAP). It is run jointly
by the State Department,
who receives referrals
from the United Nations
and conducts initial processing including
a biographic name check,
and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Service (USCIS), who conducts
more in-depth interviews and
collects biometrics from applicants.
The program has been fine-tuned
over many years. Yet the program
requires vital improvements, and
the recommendations below should
be considered minimum baseline
requirements.
Congress must change law to
enable U.S. access to refugee
biometric data collected by the
United Nations.
Since 2013, the United Nations has
a sophisticated biometric identity
management system
that collects 10 fingerprints,
two irises, and
face of every refugee,
sometimes two to four
years before a U.S. referral
for initial biographic
screening. Right now,
due to an archaic law
that prevents sharing of
biometric information
collected by a non-U.S.
citizen, the U.S. has no
access to this key identity
information. The law needs to
change to permit that biometric
data be available for vetting against
federal databases from designated
international partners such as the
United Nations.
Refugees must be biometrically
enrolled the first time they enter the
U.S. system.
State does not collect any biometrics
from refugees, and thus only
has the word of the refugee as to
who they are, making the required
biographic checks a potential goose
chase. While USCIS does collect
rolled prints and a face photo at the
time of the interview, current vetting
against some U.S. biometric
holdings do not return results for
up to 24 hours, after the interview
is already over. If State collected
the biometrics as part of their prescreening
interviews conducted
by their Resettlement Service staff,
USCIS interviews would be better
informed, and so would the final assessment.
Implement the 9/11 Commission
recommendation for a
person-centric immigration system.
State and USCIS use different case
filing assignments for refugees.
Policy does not require that State
initiate a file number that USCIS
recognizes or uses in the processing
of the ultimate immigration benefit
the refugee seeks. Thus, each applicant
has two different file numbers,
creating disconnect and potential
for confusion and duplication. Yet
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the problem could be eliminated
entirely if case numbers were eradicated
and the 9/11 Commission
recommendation for a biometricbased
identity number for the entire
immigration system were put in its
place. When biometrics become the
baseline for any immigration encounter,
identity is protected and
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of immigration encounters reduces
fraud and increases efficiencies for
legal immigration. Implementation
of this long ignored 9/11 Commission
recommendation could drastically
improve the U.S. immigration
system, and with it, refugee vetting
as it stands today.”
Contact: Janice Kephar , (202) 750-
4858, SOURCE Identity Strategy
Partners (IdSP)
16 17
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