The Washington Post reported on October 19th that as written in a letter by Rep. Jim Turner (D-Tex.) the government’s use of a two print system of fingerprinting instead of one functioning on ten fingerprints has resulted in being “no more than 53 percent effective in matching fingerprints with poor image quality against the government's biometric terrorist watch-list.”  In his letter Turner declared that, “It's going to be a coin toss as to whether we can identify terrorists.  It's a 50-50 chance, and that's not good enough.”

Turner’s claims are directed toward the government’s border security system called the US-VISIT program. That system uses networking, databases, fingerprinting and other biometric indicators to create a “virtual border” for foreigners that must register their name before entering the United States. 

The US-VISIT program has received a lot of criticism when Homeland Security decided to adopt the precedent of the two print system used in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service program called IDENT, instead of the Justice Department’s ten fingerprint system called the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which is proven to produce better results. 

Homeland Security officials claim that the decision to initiate the two print system was made in order to quickly implement the system with the intention to move to a ten print system in the future.  However, Turner rebutted, saying deploying biometric screening as quickly as possible has resulted in creating an unreliable biometric watch list unable to fully complete its goal of keeping known terrorists from crossing our borders.

When commenting of the broader issue of border control, however, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Thursday, as reported by CBS News, that “there isn't a day that goes by, literally, where a couple of people aren't turned away from our borders because they are associated in some manner, shape or form with terrorists or terror-related organizations.”  Officials have claimed that between January and September of 2004, 1,100 people wishing to cross the border have been turned away because of some sort of record raising a link to terrorist ties.

Others challenge that the threat of terrorist penetrating the American border and security is over exaggerated such as Roger Gallaway, a Liberal MP who represents Sarnia, who states that many of those turned away from the US border are for reasons not relating to terrorist ties.

Furthermore, the new head of Mexico’s federal police force,  Adm. Jose Luis Figueroa, stated on Oct. 19 that he doesn’t believe the US-Mexico border is a prime way for terrorists to sneak into America and there is no evidence that these route of entry has yet been used.  Figueroa went on to say that “up until now, we have not detected one terrorist in this country.”