OPINION:
Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced charges against a Chinese national, Shiwei Yang, accused of smuggling microchips used for artificial intelligence out of the United States.
Earlier this summer, 29 people were injured and an 82-year-old woman was killed in an antisemitic terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, by Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman.
Last year, two Jordanian nationals, Mohammad Khair Dabous and Hasan Yousef Hamdan, breached a gate at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
Although these events may seem to have little in common, they share one consistent theme: Messrs. Soliman, Yang and Dabous had all overstayed their visas and had no lawful basis to be in the country when they committed their crimes.
The Biden-Harris administration’s open borders policies allowed a historic number of people to cross into the United States illegally. Equally concerning is that a staggering number of people enter the country lawfully and then overstay, often with little or no consequences.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 800,000 foreign nationals were suspected of having overstayed their visas during fiscal year 2022, and that number was north of half a million for fiscal year 2023. Even left-leaning groups have taken notice: The Center for Migration Studies estimates that the cumulative number of visa overstays in the country could be as high as 4.8 million.
A foreign national who violates his or her visa terms could have any number of reasons to disappear into the shadows, such as intent to commit a crime or acting on behalf of an adversarial country or criminal organization.
Failure to identify these people and ensure compliance with the terms of their visas poses tangible and profound homeland security risks. Most infamously, five of the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States on expired visas.
To ensure compliance with our laws, the Trump administration recently announced an effort to require a bond for foreign nationals from certain nations with high overstay rates. This proposed pilot program would be a first step toward addressing this problem, but it is not the only solution.
Without a comprehensive and modern screening system to verify travelers entering and leaving the country, federal authorities lack basic yet vital intelligence on who has departed and, more important, who has not.
The federal government has an obligation to screen people leaving the country, and Congress has worked for decades to speed up the completion of a comprehensive biometric entry-exit screening system.
This system was a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, yet full implementation of the exit screening system remains incomplete and many of our ports of entry remain vulnerable to exploitation. With advances in biometrics technology and AI over the past 20 years, we must seize this opportunity to finally close the gap.
The system leverages cutting-edge facial comparison technology to accurately verify the identity of travelers at ports of entry. It enhances CBP’s ability to detect and prevent identity fraud by confirming that the person traveling is who they say they are, identifying expired visa holders and deterring transnational criminal activity by flagging foreign nationals who pose a safety or immigration enforcement concern.
We know this technology works. CBP has already implemented exit screening at the top 20 U.S. airports and in a limited scope at several maritime ports. As of January, CBP had identified more than 2,000 impostors and 431,000 overstays. Out of the millions of air travelers who were biometrically processed, the facial comparison technology used in this entry-exit system had a match rate of 99%.
Congress has also stepped up. As chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border security and enforcement and a member of the Appropriations Committee, I am proud of the work my colleagues and I accomplished in the budget reconciliation bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The generational investments in this legislation included more than $6 billion for CBP technology deployments and upgrades, including the biometric entry-exit system and enhanced screening and vetting of foreign travelers. In making these investments, we have laid the groundwork for a more secure homeland.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has done the same. By ending certain burdensome requirements at airport security checkpoints and advancing another long-overdue requirement, Real ID, Ms. Noem has demonstrated a renewed commitment to smarter, more effective airport security screening.
As the nation prepares to welcome millions of international visitors for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics and global threats evolve, the Homeland Security Department will face even greater challenges in knowing who is entering and when they leave the country. This is a fundamental necessity for the modern border security mission and vital to protecting Americans and the traveling public.
The Homeland Security Department must implement a complete, modern and comprehensive entry-exit screening system to close gaps that give foreign nationals the opportunity to threaten public safety and national security.
• Rep. Michael Guest, who represents Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District, is chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border security and enforcement.
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