The CBP One app was supposed to bring order to border chaos, but it became a masterclass in how users outsmart systems faster than developers can patch them.
Digital Queue Jumpers Find Their Workarounds
CBP One launched in 2020 with noble intentions: replace physical border queues with digital appointments, create predictable processing times, and eliminate the dangerous scramble at ports of entry. The app required users to be physically present in northern Mexico to book asylum appointments—a simple geofencing solution that should have worked perfectly.
Except users discovered VPNs within weeks. Suddenly, migrants worldwide were securing appointments meant for people actually waiting at the border. Like every digital system before it, CBP One fell victim to the iron law of user behavior: if there’s a workaround, someone will find it and share it on TikTok.
The Algorithm Gaming Playbook
Social media became CBP One University. TikTok tutorials taught users to coordinate “brute force” appointment hunting—groups refreshing simultaneously when slots dropped. WhatsApp guides optimized everything from selfie lighting to asylum narrative keywords. Users learned to game the facial recognition system like they were beating a dating app’s algorithm.
The appointment scarcity drove this competitive behavior. With demand vastly outstripping supply, securing a slot became a digital lottery requiring technical savvy rather than legitimate need.
When Systems Collapse Under Success
The numbers tell the story of unintended consequences. Court dates stretched to 2029 as the app funneled far more people into an already overwhelmed system than traditional processing ever could. What was meant to create order instead created a more efficient pipeline for volume—exactly the opposite of its intended effect.
The Trump administration terminated CBP One’s asylum functions on March 12, 2025, replacing it with CBP Home. The statistical change was immediate and dramatic: border encounters dropped over 90% year-on-year, according to CBP data, with zero releases into the interior by summer 2025.
The Government Software Reality Check
CBP One joins a long list of government apps that worked exactly as coded but completely differently than intended. The technical vulnerabilities—geofencing bypassed by VPNs, appointment systems overwhelmed by coordination, biometric verification defeated by coaching—reveal how difficult it is to predict user behavior at scale.
The real lesson isn’t about immigration policy. It’s about the gap between software design and human creativity. Users will always find ways to optimize systems for their needs, regardless of the original intent. Government developers, take note.
