Over eight months, some 350 immigrants headed to the United States border used the same address in California as their reported final destination — a four-bedroom home somewhere in the central valley.
The potential security concern was flagged in an independent report on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s app, CBP One, which warned it was open to security breaches.
In the 18 months since its introduction, over 765,000 appointments at Ports of Entry have been scheduled through CBP One, but the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General said the app was launched without enough thought about risks.
“I just want to point out that having an address in the United States is not a legal requirement to be able to seek asylum,” Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s border rights project, told Newsweek.
“That is an additional requirement imposed by CBP via the app in order to limit who could be eligible for international protection in the United States.”
A migrant shows the CBP One App from the US Customs and Border Protection agency, to use to apply for an appointment to claim asylum, on a phone in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on…
GILLES CLARENNE/AFP via Getty Images
Mystery over California address
Seven addresses were highlighted in the OIG report as frequently used by migrants making appointments at various ports of entry.
The report pointed to the one location in central California, a four-bedroom family home, which had been used by 358 individuals over an eight-month period as their final destination address when applying for a CBP One appointment.
“Of the 358 noncitizens, we identified 266 noncitizens with different last names who were potentially unrelated to one another,” the report said, adding that migrants using the address entered at all eight ports of entry along the border.
Ramos said the app simply does not allow asylum seekers to proceed with making an appointment unless they have a U.S. address.
“Not everyone who is seeking asylum in the United States has a U.S. address, or even knows anyone in the U.S., undocumented or with immigration status,” she said, adding that it was likely that migrants were using this particular address to get around this issue.
The report also noted that immigration officers at one port of entry cannot see data on appointments at another, making it more difficult for someone to flag the repeated use of the same address.
A map released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, showing the ports of entry used by migrants all using the same address in California on the CBP One app.
DHS OIG
The OIG said the border patrol did not have a means of flagging suspicious data coming from its own app. What the app does have is the ability to notify agents of any suspicious individuals known to the government when they seek to approach the border.
If CBP did analyze appointment data more thoroughly, the OIG said, then it could mean agents are better prepared when carrying out interviews with new arrivals.
Ramos, the immigration advocate, said it was seemingly impossible for many users to secure an appointment, with some clients waiting up to 10 months to be seen by U.S. border agents.
Other ‘vulnerabilities’ found in CBP One app
Some noncitizens using the app, which until recently was only available in northern Mexico and Mexico City, were able to create multiple accounts in order to make repeated attempts at getting an appointment at the U.S. border.
OIG said this was fraudulent and left others with a lesser chance of getting their cases heard by border officials.
In one case, an Armenian migrant submitted 466 registrations in one month alone in order to secure their appointment.
Some accounts were created within seconds of each other, leading to officials believing migrants were using “bots or scripts” to sign up on their behalf, which CBP then addressed.
Ramos cast doubt on this narrative, saying people were simply desperate to reach safety.
“Any one of us, including the CBP commissioner himself, if we were in a position where we feared for our lives and the lives of our children, and we were told that whether we could save our lives and when we could save our lives was dependent on our account being selected by an algorithm, of course we would be involved in multiple accounts,” Ramos said.
She added that some immigrants ask or pay others to help them get an appointment to cross the border, and should not be blamed for what those other individuals did on their behalf.
Other security issues were also highlighted in the report, including “software weaknesses” which could leave CBP’s migrants data open to misuse.
Analysis of the app and web-version’s code showed that attackers could bypass security protocols and attack users.
The OIG criticized CBP for not implementing patches to the app in a timely manner to fix known issues and said this was against wider DHS protocols.
The issues raised echo those from immigrants’ rights groups since the app’s introduction.
Asylum seekers queue at the El Chaparral crossing port to attend their appointment with US authorities at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on June 5, 2024.
Guillermo Arias / AFP/Getty Images
The American Immigration Council, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have all questioned user privacy, as well as the fact that the app is the only way to make an appointment at the border.
They argue this adversely affects migrants who don’t have access to smartphones, while others are excluded from the app because their language is not supported.
CBP responded to the OIG’s findings and said it had worked to introduce tougher security measures earlier this year, including allowing officers all along the border to access data from other ports of entry.
In a statement to Newsweek, a CBP spokesperson did not address questions about the California house used by multiple migrants, instead stating that the app had improved security because it allowed migrants to submit information before arriving at the border.
“CBP has made significant improvements and continues to strengthen the application to address risk-related issues and concerns, including measures to ensure equity in appointment allocations, following the DHS OIG fieldwork on CBP One during the timeframe of August 2023 to January 2024,” the spokesperson said.
“CBP has been diligent in working to prevent and counter any misuse of the application or any potential exploitation of noncitizens from bad actors, and will continue to strengthen those countermeasures.”
The OIG said it would not close the matter until it had seen evidence from CBP that it had acted on its recommendations to make the CBP One app safer.
Ramos told Newsweek changes needed to be made, as some were falling into the hands of those they were running from, and even dying, waiting for a CBP One appointment.
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