EXCLUSIVE — The federal agency that screens Americans and foreign travelers arriving in the United States on international flights is close to unlocking a seamless customs screening process where identification documents and inspection lines are a thing of the past.Imagine returning from vacation abroad. As you step off the plane, you walk toward U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but instead of pulling out your passport or Global Entry Card or interacting with a federal officer, you simply walk up to a screen and have your picture taken. The machine clears you to continue on your way. You pick up your suitcase in baggage claim and walk out of the airport.That reality is already being implemented at major U.S. airports, according to Diane Sabatino, a 28-year federal law enforcement officer who oversees the nation’s 328 land, air, and sea ports of entry for the Department of Homeland Security’s CBP.
In a sit-down interview at CBP headquarters in Washington, Sabatino described the future of international air travel as frictionless, contactless, and seamless. In some U.S. cities, the future is already here.“In a few years … people with Global Entry are going to be walking through at all of our airports, unless a CBP officer wants to speak to that traveler,” Sabatino said. “They’re moving through without really any engagement that they perceive. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we haven’t thoroughly vetted them. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t monitoring or evaluating or looking at their luggage again because it’s come through and we’ve already seen the X-Ray, or that they don’t fall into kind of a category from a threat briefing that we want to talk to them, right?”
