Preclearance at foreign airports seen as necessity to fight terrorism

BRUSSELS — The Department of Homeland Security is pushing to increase the number of US law enforcement personnel stationed at airports abroad to screen passengers before they board planes to the United States, officials say.

The effort would be designed to extend the United States’ border security to foreign airports as part of new initiatives to reduce the risk of potential terrorists entering the country.

Under a smaller programme in place, called Preclearance and run by US Customs and Border Protection, officers are based at foreign airports where they collect fingerprints and photos and check travel documents before allowing passengers to board a plane travelling to the US.

The foreign airport is responsible for many of the programme’s costs, including the construction and maintenance of the space dedicated to the effort inside the airport. Passengers departing those airports are treated the same as domestic travellers, and do not have to go through customs when they arrive in the United States.

“The expansion of Preclearance in strategic locations will further strengthen our ability to identify those who may pose a national security threat prior to encountering them on US soil,” Mr R Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of the customs and border agency, said in an interview.

The agency has more than 600 people stationed at 15 foreign airports, including facilities in Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Aruba, Abu Dhabi and Ireland.

Airports with those preclearance programmes accounted for about 16 million travellers in 2014, the most recent year of data, or 15 per cent of all foreign visitors to the United States. The department said it would like to increase that to 33 per cent of foreign passengers annually by 2024.

The proposed expansions are mostly for airports in Europe, including the one in Brussels, which was the site of terrorist attacks in March. Other airports under consideration include Turkey’s Istanbul Ataturk Airport, which was the target last month of a terrorist attack, and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, which was used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, in 2009 for his failed attempt to detonate a bomb on a plane bound for Detroit.

Homeland Security officials said that, in 2015, more than 10,700 people were refused entry to the United States after being screened by customs officers at foreign airports. While some of the denials were based on national security issues, most were for people who had a criminal record or lacked a proper visa.

Counterterrorism experts say the preclearance programme adds an extra level of protection against attacks in the United States by creating a security buffer thousands of miles from its borders. “The further out you can push the border the better,” said Mr Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security who is now president of Ridge Global, a security consulting firm.

Legislation written by Sen Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, would encourage the Department of Homeland Security to expand the preclearance programme to the 38 countries that have visa-waiver agreements with the United States. Under the visa-waiver programme, foreign visitors are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days without a visa. The legislation was included as part of a trade bill signed into law in February by President Barack Obama.

Mr Ralph Goodale, Canada’s minister of public safety, said the preclearance programme has been “tremendously beneficial for both of our countries”. He added that it provides an effective way to move people quickly across the border between Canada and the United States, and enhances security between the two countries.

Preclearance began in 1952 in Toronto, primarily as a way to streamline the customs process for passengers arriving at US airports from Canada.

At Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, travellers go through standard Canadian security and then to a US customs screening area where they are questioned and their names are checked against a security database.

Before a recent flight to Dulles International Airport in Washington from Montreal-Trudeau, at least two passengers were denied permission to board after US officers in the preclearance area noticed problems with their travel documents. Officials said it was probably a minor issue, such as the name on the airline ticket not matching the name on the passenger’s passport.

“But the key is that we are able to spot a problem before a person gets on a plane and lands in the US,” said Gregory Starr, port director for Customs and Border Protection at the Montreal airport. “While we don’t have the authority to arrest or detain them, we can at least send them back out onto the street here.”

Many European countries and airlines have embraced the programme because they believe it would ease the burden on passengers travelling to US airports.

But not everyone likes the idea of preclearance. Some European lawmakers say they are uncomfortable with having US law enforcement officers operating in their countries, and are concerned about how data collected by the Department of Homeland Security would be used.

“We see this as the extension of a long-standing practice of the US Department of Homeland Security, which already has personnel here, imposing bans on people travelling to America,” said Mr Matthias Monroy, an assistant to Mr Andrej Hunko, a member of the German Parliament who has been critical of US law enforcement personnel operating in Germany. “They say they are merely making suggestions to the airlines to deny people, but the airlines don’t feel like they can refuse.”

The programme has also been criticised in the United States. In 2013, lawmakers challenged Homeland Security officials for approving a preclearance facility in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before the Transportation Security Administration could certify that the airport met US screening and security standards.

Mr David J. Bentley, an analyst at the Center for Aviation in Manchester, England, who has studied the preclearance programme, said the most recent selection of airports by the Homeland Security Department for preclearance clearly showed more of a focus on security than travel.

“Most of the airports selected have a history of being used by jihadists as an entry and exit point to launch terrorist attacks,” he said. “It seems that counterterrorism needs are driving the process rather than long customs queues at US airports.”

Mr Kerlikowske, of the customs and border agency, said a preclearance protocol would most likely have prevented Abdulmutallab from boarding a flight in Amsterdam during his attempt to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear. While he was in the air, US customs agents had flagged Abdulmutallab as a person of interest to be questioned once he landed in Detroit.

Mr Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, has called the preclearance programme “a Homeland Security imperative” and said it allowed the government to “extend our homeland security beyond our borders and address threats as far from the homeland as possible.”

Airports such as the one in Zaventem, just outside of Brussels, are the type of facility officials had in mind when considering locations for the programme’s expansion. Even before the attack in March, US intelligence officials had worried that the airport could be used by militants to reach the United States. Officials in Belgium are still examining the costs and legal issues associated with setting up a preclearance facility. THE NEW YORK TIMES