A US-based military IT contractor that provides imaging technologies and biometric systems to US immigration authorities for border monitoring and surveillance.
Leidos Holdings, Inc. is an IT research company, headquartered in Reston, Va., that operates in several industries, including the military, intelligence, homeland security, and aviation industries.
Leidos used to be part of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which split in 2013. The larger company rebranded as Leidos and is the legal successor of the defunct SAIC. The smaller company retains the name SAIC and focuses on other government services. Leidos’ subsequent 2016 merger with Lockheed Martin’s IT division made it one of the largest federal IT contractors and one of the world’s top 25 military contractors. In 2023, contracts with the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies accounted for 49% of the company’s total revenue.
Leidos has a long history of contracting with U.S. immigration authority Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The company provides CBP with screening equipment, including “drive-through” X-ray equipment used to inspect rail cargo and vehicles crossing the border. CBP planned to purchase 17 such systems between 2016 and 2020 as part of its “Large-Scale Non-Intrusive Inspection” program. In 2021, CBP awarded Leidos, along with OSI Systems subsidiary Rapiscan and Smiths Group, a contract worth up to $480 million for “Multi-Energy Portal” X-ray systems. The contract includes a maintenance program of up to 10 years.
In addition to screening vehicles, Leidos also provides CBP with the equipment necessary for its Traveler Processing and Vetting Software (TPVS), a biometric traveler identification system that screens over one million passengers and pedestrians and 250,000 vehicles per day. The system has a database with the travel history and immigration status of over 346 million individuals, which is shared with 20 U.S. federal agencies. Additionally, TPVS cross-references pedestrians crossing the border with TECS, a CBP information-sharing platform that immigration agents use to screen persons upon entry into the U.S. Immigration authorities use TECS and TPVS to scan 10,000 travel documents per minute and can share this information with the FBI.
The TPVS system fulfills CBP’s goal of shifting its vetting of international travelers from biographic to biometric data. As part of this process, instead of relying on travel documents such as passports, CBP will collect the biometric information of all travelers before they arrive in the U.S. and compare it to that of the agency’s existing databases.
This system also expands CBP’s facial recognition capabilities. According to 2019 CBP solicitation documents, “using facial matching as the primary biometric verification modality provides a previously unavailable method to verify and facilitate travel for almost everyone, not just those travelers for whom DHS has fingerprints.”
Leidos provides similar technologies to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the U.K. government. Since 2011, it has been the contractor for the FBI’s Next Generation Identification, the agency’s main biometric database. Information stored on the FBI system feeds into the DHS’s Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) biometric database, designed by Northrop Grumman, making this information available for ICE’s immigration enforcement operations.
Similarly, the U.K government awarded Leidos a 10-year contract in 2019 to merge two existing biometric databases used by police and immigration agents. The combined database integrates fingerprints, DNA, and facial recognition capabilities.