Technology Is Closing Holes in U.S. Border

It can’t sniff drugs or rifle luggage. But the newest weapon against smuggling boasts blink-of-an-eye speed that border officials hope will be just as useful.

The weapon is a high-tech camera that feeds the license plate numbers of passing cars into a computer that can tell if the vehicle is stolen or tied to a crime, and how often it crosses the border and when.

U.S. Customs officials in San Ysidro have installed a bank of the devices, called license plate readers, in freeway lanes leading into Mexico and plan to activate them within a month.

Part of a nationwide push by Customs to stanch the flow of drug proceeds and firearms south to Mexico, the new system is but one example of how officials along the U.S. border are increasingly relying on emerging technology to cope with challenges ranging from smuggling and illegal immigration to chronic traffic snarls.

Some of the new technology is also already in place and some is still in the testing phase.

The new southbound license-plate readers will link up with readers already in place that record movement of vehicles coming into San Ysidro from Mexico. Also already in use are devices that peer down gas tanks and spot drug stashes inside tires.

They may soon be joined by hand-held sniffing machines that search all types of vehicles for drugs, and deep-penetrating gamma rays designed to scan the paylods of big trucks. In addition, the hunt is on for high-tech ways to disable cars whose drivers elude border inspections.

State-of-the-Art ID System

The Immigration and Naturalization Service uses electronic fingerprinting and computer-stored photographs to track more than 1 million immigrants who have previously been caught entering without documents. And a sophisticated new green card for resident aliens employs holograms and laser-etched data to deter fakes.

Soon to open at the San Ysidro crossing are two special commuter lanes that will allow many regular commuters coming into the United States to avoid long waits with the swipe of a card. A similar program is in place in Otay Mesa, where officials also are testing a remote voice-recognition system that someday could allow U.S.-bound cars to clear the border without stopping.

“What we see now is just the beginning of the trend,” said Raymond D. Mintz, director of applied technology for the U.S. Customs Service in Washington, D.C. “In another year or two, the whole face of the way things are done at the border is going to change.”

The newly installed license plate readers in San Ysidro offer one such change: Vehicles, always scrutinized upon entering the United States, will for the first time be recorded as they head into Mexico. The readers, which cost $10,000 per lane, take an electronic snapshot and send the digitized data into a computer bank. That information pops up when the car reenters the country.

Officials say a log of departing cars may help establish the patterns of drug-cartel couriers and make it easier to crack criminal rings that operate across the border.

“You don’t fight the drug war unless you get the complete picture. The complete picture is what’s going outbound as well as what’s coming inbound,” said Ruben Carrasco, U.S. Customs traffic manager at the San Ysidro port.

The installation of the license plate readers, also in place at crossings in Calexico and Otay Mesa, coincides with a heightened effort by Customs to search outbound vehicles for contraband.

In San Ysidro, a special team combining nine inspectors and a cash-sniffing black Labrador was formed in February to set up impromptu checkpoints for southbound vehicles at the border almost every day. The operations are often done in conjunction with local police seeking stolen cars or fugitives.

Customs administrators say the southbound operations are fruitful. Inspectors turned up $1.2 million in bundles of undeclared cash in searching a Mexico-bound van at a checkpoint last March. Other seizures have involved tens of thousands of dollars each.

“Years ago we were losing all that,” said Oscar Preciado, port director at San Ysidro.

The Downside of Security

The checkpoints haven’t made everyone happy. Flustered commuters let loose a chorus of horn-blowing when they encounter backups leaving the United States. Customs officials say delays sometimes stem from bottlenecks on the Mexican side, but they concede that the new crackdown has contributed to waits. When long lines form, inspectors have been instructed to dispense with the checks or wave traffic through faster.

The license plate readers, mounted on concrete barriers a few hundred feet north of the border, will tell inspectors whether a car nearing a checkpoint is sought by police and log all cars leaving.

Similar readers have been in place in U.S.-bound lanes at San Ysidro for about eight months. Data is checked against a Customs computer and a separate national crime database to see if a vehicle warrants special attention. By the time the car pulls up to the booth, the information is on the inspector’s computer screen. Officials say the advanced notice can prove an important warning for inspectors.

“It’s one area where we have no prenotification of who’s coming. It can be anyone from grandma from Billings, Mont., with three kids, to three terrorists,” said Dave Quainton, a Customs inspector overseeing the license plate reader project.

Mintz said the reader system could one day be combined with scales embedded in the road to show if a vehicle is carrying a load as it reenters the United States.

Information technology may also play a role in speeding cargo. One idea is to create detailed profiles with scores of facts about commercial trucks--where they’ve been, what they’re carrying and for whom. Computers could instantly sift through the checklist to help inspectors pick which loads warrant a closer look.

“Fewer things will escape without some sort of action on our part,” Mintz said.

The commuter lanes being prepared at San Ysidro promise shorter waits for frequent crossers who pay a $129 enrollment, and are fingerprinted, checked for a criminal past and deemed to be low-risk. An INS spokeswoman said the lanes should be running early in 1999. Officials expect about 10,000 people to sign up.

Such a system initially tested at Otay Mesa in 1995 now has about 3,000 enrollees. A transponder is installed in each car. When the vehicle pulls up, photographs and information about the driver and enrolled passengers appear on the inspector’s screen. The driver swipes a pass resembling a credit card and a gate swings open if everything checks out. The process takes a minute or two.

Plans call for similar express lanes elsewhere along the Mexican and Canadian borders.

A voice-recognition system is being tested at Otay Mesa that would allow a driver and passengers to gain clearance by speaking into a hand-held computer inside the car.

A cruder version in use in one rural spot along Montana’s border with Canada permits residents to cross each way at night, when the nearest immigration inspector is 70 miles away, watching by video monitor. In other remote crossings on the Northeast border, cars are searched at unmanned crossings by robot cameras.

In this way, “one inspector at a port of entry can handle multiple low-volume ports of entry,” said Ronald Collison, technology chief for the INS in Washington, D.C.

That doesn’t apply to San Ysidro, swamped by more than 40,000 vehicles daily and busy even in the wee hours. But Collison said even more modest commuter advances there will relieve the load on conventional lanes, where the wait to enter the United States averages 20 to 30 minutes.

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Reading Plates

U.S. customs officials in San Ysidro have installed high-tech cameras, called license plate readers, in freeway lanes leading into and out of Mexico to help thwart crime.

1. The cameras will take electronic snapshots of plates and send the data to a computer bank. That information and data from a crime database will come up when the car reenters the United States.

2. By the time the car pulls up to the port of entry building, the information will be on the customs inspector’s computer screen.