The official app that allows illegal immigrants to schedule appointments with authorities at U.S. ports of entry is riddled with technical problems and security flaws, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security.
The report on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) phone appointment scheduling app known as CBP One was released on August 19 and sent to Congress.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report examined whether CBP adequately planned and implemented the phone app to process migrants arriving at the southwest border seeking to enter the United States.
The OIG found that while CBP initially addressed weaknesses after implementing the app, it failed to formally assess and mitigate the “technological risks associated with expanding the application to allow immigrants to schedule appointments for processing at the southwest border.”
“We found that CBP initially failed to consider critical factors such as the design of the CBP One Genuine Presence functionality, the adequacy of the supporting application infrastructure, sufficient language translations, and the fairness of appointment distribution,” the report said.
“The result was that non-citizens who initially used the new feature faced application crashes, received frequent error messages, faced language barriers, and may not always have the same chances of getting an appointment,” it continues.
CBP’s One Phone app was developed in 2020 to serve as a unified portal for various CBP services.
However, in January 2023, under the administration of President Joe Biden, it was expanded to allow immigrants seeking to enter the United States to submit information and schedule appointments before arriving at any of the eight points of entry along the southwest border.
The expansion was part of the government’s efforts to prevent illegal border crossings by creating legal routes.
According to a July CBP press release, the app has “increased CBP’s capacity to process immigrant immigration more efficiently and orderly while eliminating unscrupulous smugglers who endanger and profit from vulnerable migrants.”
In July alone, the federal agency processed appointments at ports of entry for over 38,000 people via the app.
Since the app’s scheduling feature launched in January 2023 through the end of July 2024, more than 765,000 people “have successfully scheduled appointments to report to ports of entry rather than risk their lives at the hands of smugglers,” CBP said.
Security vulnerabilities, claims regarding identical addresses
However, the OIG found that CBP may also not be using information immigrants submit to the app before they arrive at the border to improve pre-arrival screening procedures.
While the agency uses biographical and biometric data entered into the app in advance to determine whether arriving migrants have “derogatory records,” it “does not use this information to identify suspicious trends as part of its pre-arrival screening processes,” the report said.
Elsewhere, the OIG said it may have identified unrelated immigrants who repeatedly reported identical intended residences in the United States.
“CBP does not currently have a mechanism to routinely analyze CBP One data submitted through eligible POEs (points of entry) to identify trends that could provide useful information to assist front-line CBP officers in interviewing noncitizens for appointment scheduling,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the OIG report identified security vulnerabilities in the application and the infrastructure operating systems that support it.
“Without a process to ensure that all corrective security patches are implemented in a timely manner and resources are properly configured, the data in the app may be vulnerable to misuse or cyberattacks,” the report said.
“This process is especially important because CBP is constantly updating the application,” it said.
In concluding its report, the OIG recommended that CBP develop and implement a formalized risk assessment process when developing, enhancing, or modifying mobile applications.
It also recommended introducing a mechanism to analyse the app’s enhanced information for trends and patterns of fraudulent user behaviour and to communicate these findings to the eight ports of entry that process appointments booked through the app.
The OIG also recommended that CBP establish a mechanism to regularly test CBP applications and supporting infrastructure operating systems for vulnerabilities and ensure that timely corrective actions are taken.
According to the report, CBP agreed to all three recommendations and promised to take corrective action.
The Epoch Times has contacted CBP for comment.
From The Epoch Times
