US-provided BITMAP biometric screening programme at Tocumen

The United States provided Panama with BITMAP, a biometric identification and border-management programme, and helps it screen over 15 million passenger records a year, Vice President Mike Pence said on 17 August 2017, according to the White House archive. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement describes BITMAP as a Homeland Security Investigations programme that trains and equips partner countries to collect biometric and biographic data. This is a government-to-government programme with no commercial vendor.