Real Passport, Wrong Person: Why Global Entry Modernization Matters

Real Passport, Wrong Person:
Why Global Entry Modernization Matters

By Ryan Rawding • September 30, 2026

When a wave of international flights lands at JFK, several thousand people reach the Federal Inspection Services hall within the hour, and every one of them must be identified, admitted and cleared. I began my 13 years with U.S. Customs and Border Protection as an officer in that hall, and I learned quickly that the most dangerous traveler rarely carries fake documents. Since 2018, CBP’s biometric facial comparison has identified more than 2,300 impostors traveling on real passports and other travel documents issued to someone else. Those are exactly the cases a crowded primary lane can miss: a composed traveler, a valid document, 300 people in the queue behind them and 45 seconds to decide.

Catching that traveler takes an experienced officer’s full attention, the most precious resource in the hall. For decades, that attention was spread evenly, and a returning citizen with nothing to declare took as much time at the booth as a traveler who warranted a real conversation. After four years at JFK, I spent nearly a decade in CBP’s counterterrorism work, and both jobs taught me the same lesson: every second an officer spends confirming a low-risk traveler is a second not spent on one who may pose a threat. Moving trusted travelers faster and sharpening scrutiny of everyone else are the same goal.

CBP’s modernization puts that lesson into practice. Enhanced Passenger Processing (EPP), the agency’s on-the-move biometric process for U.S. citizens returning from abroad, is now in use at 23 U.S. airports, 10 preclearance airports abroad and nine seaports, where it processes hundreds of thousands of travelers per week. When travelers reach the inspection area, a camera matches their photo to the passport photo already on file. A confirmed match clears them; no match, or any flag, sends them to an officer. CBP keeps U.S. citizens’ photos for no more than 12 hours, and any citizen who prefers can opt out and ask an officer to check their passport instead.

The results are a credit to CBP and to the airports that moved first. Since EPP launched nationally in August 2025, CBP officials have observed a 25% drop in wait times for U.S. citizens. At O’Hare, an early site, processing time per citizen fell from 60 seconds to 10. In CBP’s words, simplifying the inspection means “officers can focus on the traveler in front of them.”

Where Global Entry Comes In

CBP’s head of field operations, Diane Sabatino, has set a clear course for what comes next. The agency’s new five-year strategy prioritizes shifting administrative burdens to digitized, touchless and remote workflows, which Sabatino has said frees officers to “do what they do best, which is to talk to people and determine intent.” It is the right priority. Technology can confirm a match; only a trained officer can tell when something is off.

Global Entry is where that strategy can pay off most. Members of CBP’s trusted traveler program pay a fee and accept extra vetting in exchange for a faster arrival, so CBP has already assessed them before they land. The agency now plans to bring walk-through facial comparison to Global Entry at 38 airport terminals. Members would clear without stopping, and each one who does gives an officer time back for a traveler who needs a closer look.

Since 2021, I have seen this work from the industry side, and few people outside the program realize that many EPP lanes are supported by BigBear.ai technology. Airports choose that technology together with CBP, and we partner with both to implement it. Each installation handles up to 3,500 travelers per day with more than 99% operational reliability across the fielded base. Our work goes beyond the cameras, because a face match on its own only confirms who someone is. We also built the risk-assessment engine that pulls those matches together with other traveler data to identify who needs an officer’s attention. The system that clears a trusted traveler is the same system that flags the impostor.

That is why it matters who builds it. A system that clears travelers into the United States connects to CBP’s back-end systems in real time and handles sensitive traveler data, so the company behind it should answer to the same laws and oversight as the agency it serves. BigBear.ai is an American company, and our EPP systems are designed, built and supported here by engineers who work alongside the officers who use them.

A longer line with better cameras won’t fix what I saw from the booth. It takes technology that lets low-risk travelers keep walking, so officers have the time and information for the conversations that matter. Global Entry modernization is the next chance to prove it, and CBP has already laid the groundwork.