WASHINGTON, April 26 (UPI) -- U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a plan Wednesday for a comprehensive personnel screening program for port workers nationwide.
"What this will do is, it will elevate security at our ports themselves so that we can be sure that those who enter our ports to do business come for legitimate reasons and not in order to do us harm," Chertoff told a news conference.
The new measures will require people working in the ports and those who get daily access to port facilities to undergo background screening and receive tamper-proof biometric credentials.
The program will be implemented immediately and the TSA will begin conducting name-based background checks on all port workers operating at major U.S. ports, said Chertoff. The checks will include a review of a worker's immigration status.
Chertoff said the initial round of background checks will cover about 400,000 port workers and will focus first on employees and longshoremen who have daily access to security areas at port facilities.
Identity cards will use biometric technology to make it "virtually impossible for the card to be misused by another person," Chertoff said.
