CBP One: Government App Will Help Immigrants Seeking Asylum

A CBP application that has been in limited use since October, will now be used to obtain information and process thousands of immigrants who have requested asylum and were sent to Mexico

Photo: PAUL RATJE / AFP / Getty Images

The government of the president Joe Biden announced that u na “app ”Facial recognition, geographic location and digital technology to obtain and process information about people and cargo entering United States, will now begin to be used also in cases of immigrants seeking asylum before they enter the country, the Los Angeles Times reported this Friday.

CBP One is a mobile application that serves as a single portal for a variety of services of CBP , reported the government agency in

a statement .

Through a series of guided questions , the application directs each type of user to the appropriate services based on on of their needs.

Initially it was applied to guide users towards the appropriate services based on their particular needs, such as reporting their arrival, completing documents or scheduling appointments for the services of CBP , but since the federal agency began to use it, the extension of these services was planned.

The Customs and Protection Office Border ( CBP ), launched the mobile application CBP One in the Apple App and Google Play stores since October and initially put it into operation limiting its use to carriers, non-immigrant travelers and users of Recreation boats.

CBP One to process asylum

The “mobile app” named CBP One is now being used to help process tens of thousands of migrants arriving, mostly from Central America, living in precarious conditions on the northern border of Mexico pending processing of your asylum applications.

Last week the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas , indicated to Congress that the Biden government would request a $ 1 allowance, 200 Millions of dollars to modernize and update the technology used in the country’s ports of entry.

Civil rights groups have already questioned the use of technologies for the recognition and storage of biometric data of immigrants, when proposed by the government of the Former President Donald Trump.

The use of that technology by Customs and Border Protection ( CBP ) presents “enormous risks to privacy and it is another step forward on a dangerous path ”, said to the newspaper Ashley Gorski, lawyer from the Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“Always that a government acquires the image of a person’s face there is a risk of persistent surveillance in which the government can identify and follow the movements of the people without their knowledge ”, he added.

The Trump administration adopted in 2019 program “Stay in Mexico” to return applicants to the neighboring country Asylum, whose pending cases will still be processed.

And in gave a step or more when closing the border due to medical issues under the so-called Title 42. Since then the border authorities have rejected some 800, 01 people.

The Biden government canceled “Remain in Mexico” but maintains the Title 42 and has allowed more than 11, 01 asylum seekers asylum seekers enter the United States pending the processing of their requests for asylum and is planned that several thousand more gradually enter to wait in the US for their request for asylum to be defined.

With information from EFE