I applied for Global Entry in the spring of 2016 and, absent a willingness to travel hundreds of miles from home, the first interview that I was able to get was in August. At that point no interviews were available at Logan Airport until April 2017.
I arrived at Logan Airport and found a Customs agent behind an inch-thick bulletproof glass screen. She directed me to a different office within Terminal E, next to the Dunkin’ Donuts. There is no reception area for this office, just a door with a lot of signs saying not to knock but instead to wait in the hallway until one’s time is called. My appointment was for 10:45 and at about 11:15 our group was called in. After looking at my passport and driver’s license, the agent looked at some records on a computer, offered the names of some countries that I had visited, and then asked if I had visited Canada or Mexico within the past five years. I told her that I had just recently returned from Canada (pilot convention in Quebec City!) and dredged up a distant memory of a Mexico trip. She also asked if I’d ever been arrested (no). Then she took my fingerprints, which is about the 10th time the government has done this (the previous 9 were associated with applications for various airport security badges; see USA Today for some information on this program, which is per-airport).
At all times the agent talking to me wore a thick bulletproof vest. Added to the bulletproof glass at the beginning of the process, I began to wonder if there had ever been attack on a Customs or Immigration agent at a U.S. airport. If they don’t have any cash, why would someone bother to go this deep into the airport? If the answer is the all-purpose “because, terrorism” then why would a terrorist want to go to an office containing just one person instead of the check-in area where hundreds of people congregate?
A few minutes after walking out the door I received an email notification from DHS (“via usdhs.onmicrosoft.com” indicating that these folks are proud customers of the Microsoft cloud?) saying that my application had been approved.
Given that what they need to do is mostly the same as what they do when people enter the U.S. (aren’t foreigners fingerprinted?), i.e., ask some questions and verify documents, I wonder if the backlog couldn’t be cleared by having Global Entry “interviews” done on-the-spot when Americans return to the U.S. and there isn’t a huge line. There is already a DHS agent talking to the American. There is already a fingerprint machine. The traveler already has his or her driver’s license and passport in nearly all cases.
Related:
In june we sailed in a small boat from new brunswick to newport rhode island. In Maine dhs said we had to get a ‘cruising permit’ to travel in the U.S. The crew [2 of us] and the boat are all Canadian. The process to get the permit was about 1/2 hour however the sole officer at this very small town [eastport maine] had bullet proof glass and a vest on. We were the ninth boat to get this permit in 2016 [in Maine?]. The odd part of the permit is that we were required to phone in every time we touched shore or put an anchor down. We couldn’t see any reason for this in comparison to the millions of cars who drive into the U.S. yearly with no such requirement.
Two items stood out in this process: when we moored in a spot not on their list they just picked another spot 3 days away from where we actually were; when we tried phoning on the weekend the ‘officer’ on the other end said they don’t work weekends.
I just came back from an international flight (landed in San Francisco), and to my amusement, every single one of the passport-looker-finger-print-takers behind the counters had bulletproof vests on. I suppose having them armed makes some sense (someone could get belligerent or “make a break for it”, but the body armor seems laughable. I mean everyone they deal with is getting off of an airplane, who is going to shoot them? Perhaps they could be called upon in case someone is trying to breach security somewhere else (although they certainly didn’t look like a swat team, other than the body armor)
Probably the best rationale I can think of: if shooting breaks out in the immigration arrival area (and it will be them doing the shooting), then at least they’ll have some protection from each other’s stray bullets.
They don’t work much during the week either. We are learning from the autonomous car exercise that most of this can be automated; just stay between the lines and scan your passport like a can of beans at the market, peer into a retina or print scanner, exit if you pass or go to manned station if you don’t. Of course we will have to pay them to watch.
Rule number 1 of budget management is to spend all your budget. So of course they wear bulletproof vests and sit behind bulletproof glass because DHS “invested” in protection equipment for their force.
Once the equipment got purchased, would you rather have it sit unused in a warehouse? That way they won’t be able to apply for new budget in 3 years’ time to upgrade the worn equipment.
Having all this stuff creates further jobs to evaluate, maintain, manage, inspect, test said equipment. More budget… It’s the self licking ice cream cone.
Extrapolating from my local jurisdiction, we just voted an increase in the local force’s budget to upgrade their vests to some more expensive models that are level 3/4 resistant (hard plate armor). I’m sure I’m getting something wrong here, but quite confident the upgrades are not going to be cheap.
i wonder if there’s a market in used protection vests and where do they go next…
They carry fire arms, and are thereby required to wear the vests, which are certified to shield at least the caliber of bullets from the fire arms they are carrying, because the most likely scenario is that someone grabs the gun from the officer.