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The Half-Operational Digital Immigration Office

Want to apply for asylum? The government has an extremely janky app for
that.

Last night, the pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42
expired. With that policy in the rearview mirror, the White House and
immigration officials are reverting to the pre-pandemic Title 8-which
actually heightens penalties for illegal entries into the United States,
resulting in a five-year re-entry ban. Despite those steep penalties,
Title 8 also allows migrants to apply for asylum at a port of entry.
Even as the asylum application process reverts to Title 8, the method
for applying for asylum is undergoing a digital leap. U.S. Customs and
Border Protection is streamlining the legal immigration process into a
mobile application known as "CBP One."

The CBP One app, first created in 2018, was not originally intended to
be the digital underpinning of the U.S. asylum system, public records
<[link removed]>
obtained by the American Immigration Council show. Raul Pinto, a senior
staff attorney at the American Immigration Council, told the

**Prospect** that the public records painted a picture of an app
originally designed for cargo inspection but then transformed into "the
main tool to access the asylum process."

The public records described CBP One's core team as composed of three
"product owners." But those identities were redacted. When I asked a
federal contracting expert, Scott Amey from the Project On Government
Oversight, he said that based upon the codes used for redaction, it
appeared that it was likely concealing the identities of law enforcement
officials and agencies, not an outside contractor. At time of writing,
CBP had not responded to the

**Prospect**'s question about whether CBP One's "product owners"
included federal contractors.

That shift came fast. Pinto noted that "the rapid development of the app
makes you wonder whether the app was actually ready to take on this very
important role." Before Title 42's expiration, migrant rights
advocates raised concerns about the app's reliability, software
issues, and compatibility with unsophisticated smartphones; plus privacy
concerns regarding biometric, geolocation, and facial recognition data
harvesting.

[link removed]

Now, with the end of Title 42, advocates are concerned about whether the
app can remedy previous software issues while adjusting to the latest
shifts in U.S. immigration policy. To be fair, there's potential for
CBP One to streamline a notoriously convoluted process by centralizing
and streamlining services. But at the same time, restrictions dictated
by U.S. policy, combined with the app's documented history of software
glitches, could exacerbate those problems, if not create new ones.
Avoiding that possibility is paramount as CBP One increasingly becomes
the first touch point for migrants seeking asylum.

During the Title 42 era, migrants using the CBP One app would apply at a
designated time each day, predictably causing it to crash-akin to how
Ticketmaster goes down every time a new Taylor Swift concert is
announced. Maureen Meyer, from the Washington Office on Latin America,
said some of the early issues included confusion over whether a single
application could be used for a whole family, or whether each person
needed to file for separate appointments. That desperate race for an
appointment often meant that potential surveillance concerns were
overlooked as migrants attempted to schedule asylum hearings.

Meyer described additional software issues with the facial recognition
technology. For example, photos of migrants from Africa and Haiti were
not accepted
<[link removed]>
by CBP One's facial recognition system, because the app couldn't
recognize their dark skin. They couldn't even begin the asylum process
for reasons completely beyond their control or related to the merits of
their case.

Ahead of Title 42's expiration, the Department of Homeland Security
announced that it would be revamping the app's appointment scheduling
system. Those changes included offering more time to request an
appointment, and then DHS following up to offer an appointment.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, applicants waiting the
longest would be prioritized. In addition, DHS would expand the number
of appointments available each day to 1,000.

Meanwhile, Meyer estimated that around 700 to 800 appointments were
being offered per day during Title 42. Katherine Hawkins from the
Project On Government Oversight told the

**Prospect** that despite DHS expanding the number of appointments
available per day, it still falls short of the number of people waiting
along the southern U.S. border. Hawkins described participating in a DHS
press call where additional restrictions were announced, such as that if
a migrant arrives at a port of entry without a CBP One appointment, that
could constitute "circumvent[ing] lawful pathways," thereby subjecting
them to penalties under Title 8.

At time of writing, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had not responded
to the

**Prospect**'s questions about how many appointments were being
offered daily prior to Title 42's expiration. Additionally, CBP did
not respond to questions asking if additional criteria such as country
of origin were being considered in deciding which migrants receive the
chance to book an appointment.

~ JAROD FACUNDO, WRITING FELLOW

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