At a speech last week in Washington, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner announced an immigration security initiative that will send inspectors to airports abroad to screen visitors coming to the United States by plane.  This pilot program will begin within the month of May in Warsaw International Airport.  The mission of the initiative, according to Bonner, will be detecting security risks and immigration fraud.

Customs and Border Protection will measure the success of the initiative in six months and plans to extend it to other airports.  Bonner said countries and airports are voluntarily obliging and Warsaw International was the first to ask to participate.

*****

U.S. officials told Reuters last week that the U.S. is planning on giving the world police body Interpol information on about 400,000 lost or stolen U.S. passports to increase security.  The passports involved were each issued to someone who later reported them lost or stolen, rather than blank U.S. passports, which U.S. officials say seldom go missing. 

Interpol officials told Reuters that Interpol’s database contains serial numbers of 1.1 million stolen travel documents of which 188,609 were black papers in which individuals can insert photographs, descriptions and aliases, therefore posing a special risk.  A new system will enable police and immigration officials to check whether a travel document is stolen by simply typing its number into a computer.