LAW-ENFORCEMENT CHECKS DURING BORDER INSPECTION
CBP inspection systems conduct law-enforcement queries that can return information such as wants, warrants, lookout records and data from systems including the National Crime Information Center. But travelers should not assume that every arrest or court record from every jurisdiction or country will necessarily appear in every inspection.
DHS documentation states that traveler information is screened against TECS records and other law-enforcement databases, including the National Crime Information Center, to identify possible security or law-enforcement concerns.
Do not assume that a case is invisible to CBP merely because the traveler was never convicted. Law-enforcement systems can contain information other than final convictions.
Current CBP processing documentation expressly identifies outstanding wants and warrants among information that may be available to the inspecting officer.
The fact that CBP can identify an arrest or law-enforcement record does not by itself establish a criminal ground of inadmissibility. The disposition, statute, conduct and applicable immigration law still must be analyzed.
CBP has substantial law-enforcement information-sharing capabilities, but official public sources do not support claiming that every police or court record from every foreign country automatically appears on a CBP officer’s screen.
Where the traveler has a foreign criminal history, the safest approach is to review the actual certified records rather than rely on assumptions about database visibility.
A record being sealed, expunged or vacated does not answer whether CBP may have historical law-enforcement information or whether the disposition continues to matter under immigration law.
CBP’s current Trusted Traveler Program materials identify criminal history, arrests, pending charges, warrants, immigration violations and law-enforcement investigations as information relevant to program eligibility.
Current CBP documentation expressly identifies outstanding wants and warrants among information available during inspection screening.
Law-enforcement systems can contain information beyond convictions, so it is unsafe to assume that a non-conviction event will necessarily be invisible.
No. The immigration consequence must be analyzed separately from the existence of the law-enforcement record.
These government materials describe the principal CBP inspection, travel-record and law-enforcement systems discussed on this page.
What appears in a government database and what creates immigration inadmissibility are two different questions. Both should be addressed before travel.