Over eight months, some 350 immigrants headed to the United States border used the same address in California as their reported final destination — a four-bedroom home somewhere in the central valley.
The potential security concern was flagged in an independent report on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s app, CBP One, which warned it was open to security breaches.
In the 18 months since its introduction, over 765,000 appointments at Ports of Entry have been scheduled through CBP One, but the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General said the app was launched without enough thought about risks.
“I just want to point out that having an address in the United States is not a legal requirement to be able to seek asylum,” Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s border rights project, told Newsweek.
“That is an additional requirement imposed by CBP via the app in order to limit who could be eligible for international protection in the United States.”
A migrant shows the CBP One App from the US Customs and Border Protection agency, to use to apply for an appointment to claim asylum, on a phone in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on…
GILLES CLARENNE/AFP via Getty Images
Mystery over California address
Seven addresses were highlighted in the OIG report as frequently used by migrants making appointments at various ports of entry.
The report pointed to the one location in central California, a four-bedroom family home, which had been used by 358 individuals over an eight-month period as their final destination address when applying for a CBP One appointment.
“Of the 358 noncitizens, we identified 266 noncitizens with different last names who were potentially unrelated to one another,” the report said, adding that migrants using the address entered at all eight ports of entry along the border.
Ramos said the app simply does not allow asylum seekers to proceed with making an appointment unless they have a U.S. address.
“Not everyone who is seeking asylum in the United States has a U.S. address, or even knows anyone in the U.S., undocumented or with immigration status,” she said, adding that it was likely that migrants were using this particular address to get around this issue.
The report also noted that immigration officers at one port of entry cannot see data on appointments at another, making it more difficult for someone to flag the repeated use of the same address.
A map released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, showing the ports of entry used by migrants all using the same address in California on the CBP One app.
DHS OIG
The OIG said the border patrol did not have a means of flagging suspicious data coming from its own app. What the app does have is the ability to notify agents of any suspicious individuals known to the government when they seek to approach the border.