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Airport detentions are letter imperfect

These passengers aren't terrorists, they're just treated like them when a coding system mismatches names.

MIAMI - Dr. Francisco Medina is proud to be an American. A pediatrician specializing in emergency medicine, Medina is in the business of saving lives. His son is a U.S. Marine.

So it comes as a shock to him that every time he re-enters the country he is treated as a criminal suspect, maybe a terrorist. Because of a flaw in the immigration computer system, the doctor's name keeps getting confused with that of a wanted fugitive.

Medina has no idea who the computers are mistaking him for, but after being detained by immigration officials more than a dozen times, he thinks it's time federal authorities fix the problem.

"I enjoy traveling, but the stress of getting on the plane and then knowing what awaits me when I land, it's no fun," said Medina, 52, who was born in El Salvador but came to the United States as a small child and later became a U.S. citizen.

There is one small comfort to Medina's predicament: He is not alone.

After the Miami Herald published a story about an Argentine-born man in the same situation, a number of similar cases have emerged, including a school principal, a businessman, a Chilean bolero singer, a Miami-Dade police officer and even a local immigration officer.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recognize that the computer systems they use are not perfect. But the number of people affected is low, they say.

"We don't keep track of "why me, same name stops,' " said DHS spokesman Zachary Mann. The customs and border patrol arm of DHS' Miami office received only 26 complaints over the past 27 months, he said, roughly the same as the rest of the country. That wasn't bad, he added, considering Miami International Airport handles more than 30-million passengers a year, about half from overseas.

But critics of the system say there are more people out there who chose not to complain because of the embarrassment of being singled out as a potential terrorist, and a lack of official channels for registering complaints. "I'm sure a lot of people go through this," said Medina, who has never registered a formal complaint himself.

He began being detained by immigration officials at Miami airport about 10 years ago. It varied from trip to trip. Some were for business, others to visit his retired parents living in Costa Rica. Half the time he passed through without problem, but the other times he would be sent to an immigration detention room while his identity was checked more thoroughly.

He didn't travel that much, so he put up with the two or three times a year he was stopped.

That changed after Sept 11, 2001. Extra vigilance at airports because of the terrorist attacks meant he would end up in the detention room - officially known as "hard secondary" - every time.

It has become an all too familiar routine.

"I stand in line, and when I get to the inspector he goes through my papers," he said. "He starts opening his eyes wider, looking up and down. Then he tells me "Wait here, you have to go for a secondary inspection.' "

Medina says he tries to help the inspector out by explaining the problem, "but it makes no difference." The visit to hard secondary normally takes about 30 to 45 minutes.

When the official is satisfied, Medina says, his passport is handed back. The officer explains: "Well, we were looking for this guy, and it's not you."

Others who have ended up in hard secondary have similar experiences.

A U.S. citizen and frequent flyer who travels Latin America for British Telecom, Jose Luis Alvarez estimates he has been stopped 50 times. In his case, it began eight years ago. A church-going father of four, Alvarez made an official complaint. In fact, he has written letters to Congress and a host of federal agencies seeking to have his identity cleared.

In a letter from U.S. Customs last year informing Alvarez, 39, that his case had been reviewed, it was determined that his records "must remain in the system for valid enforcement reasons."

The letter went on to assure Alvarez "you are not on record as a criminal suspect, nor is any violation alleged or suspected." It suggested Alvarez carry the letter with him when traveling to help immigration officials "differentiate" his name. But there was "no guarantee" that this would prevent him being detained again.

Sure enough he was.

He wrote again last month to Gloria Marshall, head of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of DHS. "I have a beautiful wife, four children and two dogs," he wrote. "My rights are being violated, and I don't appreciate it."

He explained how he was recently embarrassed in front of his clients by an immigration officer who allegedly yelled at him to "Sit down," while waiting for his secondary inspection.

"I am treated better entering foreign countries than I am coming back into the United States," he wrote. "I long for the day when I enter the USA and am told "Welcome back home, Mr. Alvarez.' "

He may have to wait awhile. Officials concede that under the computer system used by immigration officials, there's very little they can do.

That is because of something called soundex, a commonly used, but little-known system that allows information to be indexed by how it sounds rather than alphabetically.

The system, developed in the 1880s and patented in 1918 by Robert C. Russell of Pittsburgh, was originally used to address name spelling problems in U.S. census data.

In soundex, surnames become a simple phonetic code. Typically this involves using the first letter of the name, followed by a three-digit code representing similar-sounding consonants in the name, such as "c" and "z," or "b" and "p."

This allows computers to pick up alternate spellings and sound-alikes. Airlines have used soundex to tackle a problem with passengers' making multiple reservations using slight alterations to their names, such as Smith and Smyth. Federal agencies have also discovered it can be a useful tool in processing criminal data.

But soundex is based on English pronunciations and is less accurate with European, Hispanic or Arabic names. The system has trouble handling multiple names, as occurs in Latin American countries.

U.S. officials recognize the system does create a lot of false positives as it processes different data banks, mainly the Treasury Enforcement Communications System and the National Criminal Information Center. "Federal agencies put in information and it keys off the name, and these systems cross-reference each other," said Mann, the DHS spokesman. "With a similar name you may get picked."

Other personal data, such as date and place of birth, normally differentiates the name of the wanted criminal. However, sometimes the information may be fuzzy. "The guy (immigration official) on the line has only a few moments to decide whether to let someone through, or to hold him up for a few minutes," Mann said.

It's not a perfect system, Mann conceded.

"There are so many variations involved. There are no cure-alls," he said. "We hope that people understand what we are trying to do. It's a complex issue. We want to expedite law-abiding citizens and catch the bad guys."

People whose names are repeatedly red flagged by the system can request review of their case by DHS. While an official letter may help, it's "not worth the paper it's written on," Mann said. Agents are trained to be suspicious of document forgeries.

To make matters more confusing, the preboarding screening of airline passengers is handled by a separate agency of DHS, the Transportation Security Administration. It uses a different system. Curiously, while it also suffers from mismatching of names, Medina and Alvarez say they have never been stopped by preboarding checks.

Civil rights advocates say the government can do better than trying to match similar sounding names.

"It's inefficient and too crude a law enforcement technique," said Howard Simon, executive director of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "There's got to be a better way."

Medina and Alvarez have their own suggestions based on using unique physical characteristics, such as the iris of the eye or thumbprints in a passport.

But the government is a long way from solving the problem," experts say. "They have got a terrible problem with information management," said David Sobel, general counsel to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group in Washington.

Experts blame the confusion in part on longstanding problems in the U.S. immigration system, which is badly in need of a complete overhaul.

"Immigration is understaffed and uses antiquated machinery," said Douglas Laird, a security consultant and former security director for Northwest Airlines. "The agency has been so poorly managed over time. Hopefully Homeland Security will help with that."

Others are less optimistic. The magnitude of the task may simply be too great.

"The very size of the reorganization and assimilation of the disparate functions within the DHS is staggering in its complexities in all forms of human endeavor," said Billie Vincent, an aviation security consultant and former director of Civil Aviation Security for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Some passengers "will probably continue to suffer the indignities associated with the imperfect programs and processes that are applied by imperfect people who may be imperfectly trained, poorly motivated, (and) have their own personal problems."