Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is a sub-agency of DHS. It applies AI primarily to two functions: trade enforcement and border biometric identification.
Trade enforcement
On October 31, 2025, CBP signed a two-year contract with Altana to provide AI-enabled compliance screening. The agency described the screening as "critical" for enforcing Section 232 national security tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other products.
Border biometric identification
CBP uses facial recognition for border-crossing identification. Reporting by MIT Technology Review on August 14, 2024, under the headline "The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age," described the use of AI to track the biometric aging of unaccompanied minors over time.
Google began rolling out machine-learning-based age estimation in the United States on July 30, 2025, a technology adjacent to those used in CBP border-screening contexts.
Oversight and controversy
Civil-liberties concerns have been raised around the biometric tracking of children and immigrants. Accuracy and bias have also been raised in connection with facial recognition for non-white and non-adult faces (see AI and Surveillance, Algorithmic Accountability and Bias Audits).
Relationships
- parent: DHS — Department of Homeland Security (AI Deployer)
- deployed-by: Altana AI, facial-recognition vendors.
- related: AI and Surveillance, Algorithmic Accountability and Bias Audits, Federal AI Adoption — Patterns and Tensions.