Incident 484: US CBP App's Failure to Detect Black Faces Reportedly Blocked Asylum Applications

Description: CBP One's facial recognition feature was reportedly disproportionately failing to detect faces of Black asylum seekers from Haiti and African countries, effectively blocking their asylum applications.

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Alleged: US Customs and Border Protection developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Haitian asylum seekers , African asylum seekers and Black asylum seekers.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
484
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2023-01-18
Editors
Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

1.3. Unequal performance across groups

Risk Domain

  1. Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

AI

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Unintentional

Facial recognition bias frustrates Black asylum applicants to US, advocates say
theguardian.com · 2023

The US government’s new mobile app for migrants to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border is blocking many Black people from being able to file their claims because of facial recognition bias in the tech, immigration advocates say.

Non-pr…

Facing Bias: CBP’s Immigration App Doesn’t Recognize Black Faces, Barring Thousands from Seeking Asylum
theborderchronicle.com · 2023

The U.S. government’s immigration app, CBP One, does not recognize dark-skinned people, barring many from seeking asylum, according to nonprofits working at the Mexican border.

Already marginalized, Haitian and African asylum seekers are no…

Senator Markey Calls on DHS to Ditch Mobile App Riddled with Glitches, Privacy Problems, for Asylum Seekers
markey.senate.gov · 2023

Washington (February 21, 2023) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) urging it to cease using its problematic CBP One app. DHS has required migrants seeking asylum at the south…

U.S. border app has host of issues, including recognizing Black skin tones, migrants say
theglobeandmail.com · 2023

When the U.S. government rolled out the CBP One app in January, it was touted as a way to stem the flow of migrants at the country’s southern border while still giving them the opportunity to make refugee claims.

Instead of showing up at a …

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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