WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The US government has installed an integrated ten-print biometric identification technology at all Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol stations, the Homeland Security Department announced Tuesday.

    As a result of the joint effort between the Homeland Security Department and the Justice Department, thousands of criminal suspects have been arrested since the program began as a pilot in August 2001, including 138 homicide suspects, 67 kidnapping suspects, 226 sexual assault suspects, 431 robbery suspects, and 2,342 suspects for assaults of other types.

    In addition, 4,801 suspected traffickers of narcotics have been arrested, and 87 criminals and other inadmissible aliens seeking admission to the United States have been identified, the department said in a statement.

    The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) provide rapid identification of individuals with outstanding criminal warrants through electronic comparison of ten-print digital fingerscans against a vast nationwide database of previously captured fingerprints.

    The technology allows CBP Border Patrol agents to simultaneously search the fingerprint database of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify criminal suspects, the statement said.

    The IDENT/IAFIS program, which began as a pilot in August 2001,is now fully operational within all 148 Border Patrol stations andis in the process of being deployed to all the ports of entry nationwide, according to the statement.

    Asa Hutchinson, under secretary for border and transportation security, said the program is a fast effective weapon in the war on terror that allows law enforcement personnel to thoroughly check immigration and criminal backgrounds of people that have entered the United States illegally. Enditem