Our “Bestiary”

Arrival and Departure Information System (ADIS)

An ID card with cartoonish hands, feet, and eyes. The words "Visa" and "United States of America" appear on the card.

A person whose visa has expired is tracked through CBP’s Arrival and Departure Information System (ADIS), which is used at entry and exit points, and includes photos, biographical and visa information, including the end date for an authorized stay.  ICE uses ADIS data to determine, using algorithms, which non-immigrant visitors might overstay their visa, based on an individual’s entry and exit data, and their immigration status information.Footnote 1 In 2017, the DHS OIG found that ADIS incorrectly identified visa overstays more than 42 percent of the time.Footnote 2  

While DHS officers can manually trawl ADIS to look for overstays, ICE also combines ADIS data with other datasets and prediction tools to continuously track people such as students on indefinite visas. In those cases, ADIS data is supplemented with ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). ADIS combines those data, and departure information, to identify “leads,” which it then sends to CBP’s prediction and risk assessment data system, ATS.Footnote 3 ATS conducts its own (black box) algorithmic risk-assessment to generate a list of prioritized targets for LeadTrac — a HSI database that vets and prioritizes lists of people in the US whom a DHS algorithm has flagged as being likely to overstay or violate their visas.Footnote 4 Likewise, ADIS data is collected and stored by Palantir’s predictive scoring tool, AFI, as well as on Palantir servers.Footnote 5

Jump to top of page