Building the digital wall: CBP One, algorithmic bias, and the controllability of difference in United States asylum policy

Abstract

Within migration studies, citizenship is commonly used to delineate national membership and corresponding rights. However, more critical approaches to citizenship examine how States structure access to membership through processes of inclusion and exclusion. This article focuses on differential exclusion as a mechanism through which States manage difference, examining the Customs and Border Patrol One Mobile Application (CBP One) as a contemporary digital bordering infrastructure. Between May 2023 and January 2025, CBP One was used by United States immigration officials to schedule asylum appointments at the United States-Mexico border, replacing in-person access to asylum procedures with a mobile application. Rather than functioning as a purely neutral administrative tool, CBP One is analysed as a socio-technical system embedded within broader legal and political conditions that advocates and researchers have associated with differential access outcomes, particularly for asylum seekers lacking reliable internet access, dominant-language proficiency, lighter skin tones, or freedom from disability-related barriers. Building on scholarship on digital migration governance and non-entrée, this article conceptualises CBP One as part of a broader infrastructure of “controlling difference,” whereby digital systems mediate access to asylum. It further situates CBP One within a broader trajectory of United States bordering policies in which access to asylum is increasingly mediated through both physical and virtual border walls.