This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 20th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Department of Homeland Security is moving rapidly to adopt a new rule that would order the

routine collection of biometric data in immigration

cases, and that's really just the start of it.

Caters Patrick Edicton and Matthew Feeney wrote separate comments on the proposed rule.

We spoke last week.

This is sort of an odd situation,

and I'll describe it as best I can,

but you two have written comments on notices of proposed rulemaking at the federal level,

but you wrote separately on the issue.

So Pat, why don't you lay out what the proposed rule is and why both of you felt the need

to respond to this proposal so quickly.

So when this was brought to our attention by some folks in the immigration rights community.

We realized that we had a relatively short time frame in which to work,

and so that's why we made the decision to go ahead and just kind of crank out our own two cents worth.

If we'd had another week or ten days, we would have done a single comment together.

But this is a particular proposed rule by the Department of Homeland Security

for the collection and use of biometrics by citizenship and immigration service and the long and

the short of it is they want to begin employing a range of biometrics a much

greater range of biometrics, a much greater range of biometrics on folks and as here to

fore been the case. But the most radical thing that I think caught my attention

...