CBP wants one company to fingerprint all 60,000+ of its workers

CBP looks to overhaul its fingerprinting program

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is looking for a single contractor to run electronic fingerprinting for its entire workforce.

The agency posted a draft contract to the federal hiring site SAM.gov on March 12, 2026. The five-year deal would cover everyone who needs a background check, from new hires to current employees to outside contractors.

CBP is one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, with more than 60,000 employees.

Everyone at CBP gets fingerprinted

The program covers all CBP employees, contractors, consultants, and job applicants who go through a background investigation. That includes current workers, who face periodic reinvestigations, not just new hires.

Fingerprint-based checks are a standard federal requirement for law enforcement agencies.

The prints run through the FBI’s Next Generation Identification system, which checks criminal history databases and confirms identity. The contract would be managed through CBP’s Office of Human Resources Management.

Contract runs five years, worth under $9M

The contract would run from June 24, 2026, through June 23, 2031. CBP set a target price under $9 million but said that number is not a hard limit.

The agency can accept a bid above or below that figure if it decides the offer gives the best overall value. One company wins the contract, and billing works on a fixed price per fingerprint.

Volume can spike into the thousands daily

The number of fingerprint requests can swing sharply from one day to the next. At peak times, CBP may send several thousand requests in a single day.

Those spikes are tied to hiring pushes, scheduled reinvestigations of current employees, and contractor renewal cycles.

Volume is expected to shift based on how aggressively the agency is hiring and how much funding is available at any given time.

Contractor must put locations near every applicant

The winning company must offer a fingerprinting site within 60 miles of each candidate’s zip code.

If no site is available within that range, the contractor has one business day to notify CBP, then two more days to find an alternative. If that search fails, the company must get CBP approval before moving forward.

The 60-mile rule is designed to cut down travel burdens on applicants going through the process.

Tight deadlines govern every appointment

Speed is built into the contract. Within one business day of getting a request, the contractor must identify a site and reach out to the candidate. Appointment scheduling must wrap up within three business days.

The fingerprinting itself must happen within 10 business days of CBP’s initial request.

Candidates can book their own slots through a web system that runs around the clock and can cancel up to 24 hours before their appointment.

Winner has 60 days to go fully live

Once the contract is awarded, the company has no more than 60 days to become fully operational. During that window, it must clear staff, finish training, test its database and web tools, and set up billing systems.

CBP staff must be able to log in and track every request in real time.

The contractor must run a web portal showing request status, contact attempts, appointment data, and billing all in one place.

Slow hiring has long been a problem at CBP

Federal law enforcement background checks have been a bottleneck at CBP for years.

A Government Accountability Office report found that hiring at CBP has taken anywhere from 300 to 600 days in recent years.

Between 2018 and mid-2024, only about 2.5% of CBP officer applicants and 1.8% of Border Patrol agent applicants made it through the full process.

A faster fingerprinting step could help move more people through that pipeline.

A new law is driving a hiring surge

Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, 2025, which included about $4.1 billion for CBP to hire and train more personnel.

That money targets new Border Patrol agents, field operations officers, and air and marine agents.

On top of that, a large share of CBP’s law enforcement staff will become eligible to retire starting in 2027, according to the GAO.

A faster fingerprinting system would help the agency handle both new hiring and the wave of reinvestigations that comes with staff turnover.

This program does not touch traveler screening

This contract has nothing to do with how CBP screens people at the border.

The agency runs a separate biometric entry-exit system for travelers, which expanded under a final rule that took effect Dec. 26, 2025.

That rule lets CBP collect facial biometrics from all noncitizens entering or leaving the country at airports, land ports, and seaports.

The One Big Beautiful Bill also set aside about $673 million to expand that traveler-facing system.

The employee fingerprinting program and the traveler biometric system serve different purposes but are both part of CBP’s push to modernize its biometric tools.

Privacy rules govern the whole system

The contractor will handle sensitive personal data, including biometric information.

Under the draft terms, the company must follow Department of Homeland Security and CBP security policies, as well as the Privacy Act. All transfers of personally identifiable information must be encrypted.

The solicitation also requires the contractor to maintain a testing environment that matches the live system, so CBP can check any changes before they go into effect.

No contract awarded yet

The solicitation is still in draft form. CBP has not issued any public statement about the program.

If the timeline holds, the winning contractor would need to be up and running by late August 2026. The contract would then run continuously for five years, with volume tied to hiring needs and available funding.

CBP’s broader biometric modernization work is expected to continue expanding through at least 2031.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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