By Ramyar Daneshgar
Security Engineer | USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

A significant shift in American border policy quietly unfolded in late 2025, one that will define the next decade of biometric privacy law. The Department of Homeland Security finalized a rule requiring facial-recognition screening for all non-citizens entering and exiting the United States. The scope of this mandate is unprecedented. For the first time DHS will capture the facial images of infants, children, adults and elderly travelers without exception. The development was first covered by Reuters, which reported that the rule will take effect on December 26, 2025.

The legal authority for this expansion appears in the Federal Register under the title “Collection of Biometric Data From Aliens upon Entry to and Departure From the United States.” The rule amends federal immigration regulations to formalize biometric capture at airports, seaports and land border crossings. It also grants DHS the ability to adopt new biometric modalities in the future if facial recognition becomes insufficient or if additional identity-verification needs arise.

The shift may appear administrative, but it is not. It embeds biometric surveillance into the architecture of cross-border travel in a way that will shape privacy, cybersecurity, and civil-liberties debates for years to come.

How DHS Built a Universal Biometric Regime

For nearly twenty years, the United States has operated a patchwork of biometric screening systems at selected ports of entry. These systems relied primarily on fingerprints and passport photographs. Participation was uneven. Children under 14 and adults over 79 were typically exempted. DHS argues that exceptions created gaps in identity records that undermined the accuracy of the arrival and departure database.

The new rule eliminates these gaps completely. By mandating facial capture for all non-citizens DHS positions facial recognition as the central method of verifying identity at every border modality. According to DHS the agency views this step as essential to reducing impostor cases, identifying overstayed visas and unifying the fragmented identity systems across the border environment.

NextGov reporting indicates that DHS has simultaneously proposed expanding biometric collection in immigration benefits processes, reinforcing the impression that the federal government is constructing a fully integrated biometric ecosystem that covers both travel and immigration workflows.

From DHS’s perspective these initiatives reflect a national-security imperative. From a privacy and civil-liberties standpoint they represent a fundamental redesign of how individuals are identified and tracked as they move through the United States.

Why Facial Recognition Is Not Just Another Data Point

Facial recognition differs from traditional identity attributes in one crucial way. It does not merely record what a person knows or holds. It records who they are. The immutability of a faceprint makes it uniquely sensitive. Once compromised a biometric cannot be revoked or replaced. It persists across decades and across jurisdictions.

For this reason privacy regulators across the world classify biometric identifiers as among the most sensitive categories of personal data. Under the General Data Protection Regulation facial images used for identification constitute special category data. Under the California Privacy Rights Act facial geometry is defined as sensitive personal information. The privacy obligations imposed on companies that process or store such information are therefore substantially higher compared to typical personal information.

The DHS rule does not directly impose obligations on private companies beyond those already applicable under federal and state privacy law. However any company supporting travel, identity verification, cloud hosting, analytics, airline operations or border technology may indirectly interact with biometric data generated under this program. These companies must treat the biometric information as high risk.

Commercial partners that transmit or store biometric data on behalf of DHS or airline operators, for example, may be subject to breach-notification laws, heightened security requirements and deletion duties. Airlines and their vendors already participate in CBP’s Traveler Verification Service and must ensure that data flows comply with the promises made in their privacy notices. Companies should expect increased scrutiny of how biometric data is archived, encrypted, retained and shared.

Legal Exposure for Companies Handling Border-Generated Biometrics

The private sector now plays a central role in the border technology ecosystem. Identity-verification vendors, travel-tech platforms, airline contractors and cloud-service providers all facilitate biometric matching, data transfer or storage. The DHS rule magnifies the legal risks for these entities.

Companies that receive or process biometric data must ensure that their vendor agreements include precise requirements for retention, deletion and security controls. Breach-notification triggers must be clearly defined. If a business handles data belonging to Illinois residents, its activities may intersect with the Biometric Information Privacy Act, which imposes strict consent and disclosure requirements. Illinois courts have repeatedly held that collecting facial geometry without consent creates actionable privacy violations even if the images were originally public. These interpretations demonstrate how state-level frameworks can produce liability even in the context of a federal program.

Organizations must also evaluate the risk of discrimination claims. Facial-recognition systems are documented to have variable accuracy across demographic groups. If a false match leads to a denial of boarding or secondary screening, companies involved in the matching workflow could become implicated in civil actions or administrative complaints related to disparate impact or unfair practices.

The Cybersecurity Risk Behind the Expansion

The cybersecurity implications of the new rule are substantial. A single breach of biometric data can cause irreversible harm. Unlike a credit card number or password a faceprint is permanent. Breaches of biometric databases have previously led to national-security concerns. As the biometric footprint of the border expands the attack surface for threat actors expands with it.

Travel systems often involve multiple integrated layers. Cameras and kiosks capture facial imagery. Airline systems interface with CBP. Data is transmitted to cloud infrastructure. Matching algorithms perform real-time comparisons. Any weakness in this chain can expose sensitive information.

Companies supporting these systems must ensure strong encryption, access control and monitoring. They should deploy tamper-resistant storage systems and implement logging mechanisms that can detect unauthorized access. The DHS rule does not lower the cybersecurity bar. If anything it raises it, because the quantity and sensitivity of the data being generated will increase significantly.

Cloud-service providers that host border-related systems must comply with the highest standards of data protection. Airlines must ensure that their data-sharing agreements accurately describe what data is being transmitted and for what purpose. Identity-verification vendors must ensure that their algorithms are transparent enough to withstand regulatory review.

Cross-Border Transfers and International Implications

Many travelers affected by the rule are citizens of countries with strict data-protection laws. When biometric data is processed by U.S. companies, questions arise about compliance with international transfer regimes. Under the updated EU US Data Privacy Framework companies receiving European data must demonstrate adequate safeguards. The processing of biometric identifiers intensifies the scrutiny.

European regulators typically treat biometric processing as requiring heightened necessity and proportionality assessments. If a U.S. airline, travel-tech vendor or cloud provider stores or processes biometric images of European passengers, it must adhere to the Data Privacy Framework and ensure contractual safeguards with partners. Even if DHS itself is exempt from GDPR obligations, the private sector is not.

Other countries, including Canada and Brazil, have objected to biometric scraping and mass biometric processing by private companies. The expansion of U.S. border biometrics is likely to influence foreign regulatory agendas and may trigger diplomatic concerns for travelers whose biometric data is captured by U.S. systems.

What Companies Must Do Now

Businesses that deal with identity systems, travel data, cloud hosting or biometric workflows should take immediate steps to prepare.

They should create or update data-flow maps that identify each system interacting with facial-recognition data. They should update their incident-response plans to incorporate biometric exposure scenarios. They should review contract language with vendors and partners to ensure explicit requirements for security, deletion and purpose limitation. They should audit their storage systems and implement encryption and access controls appropriate for sensitive data.

Companies should also review privacy notices to ensure travelers receive accurate information about how biometric data is handled. Even if the capture occurs at the direction of DHS, secondary processing by commercial partners must be adequately disclosed.

Conclusion

The United States is entering a new phase of biometric border control. Facial-recognition capture for all non-citizens represents a structural transformation in how identity is verified and how movement is monitored. Although DHS frames the rule as a national-security measure, the consequences extend far beyond border checkpoints. They will shape the compliance obligations and cybersecurity risks of travel companies, technology vendors, cloud providers and any business that participates in the identity-verification ecosystem.