At EU external borders hand-held devices such as fingerprint, palm and iris scanners, are used to collect biometrics and identify individuals crossing a border both at Border Crossing Points and along the green border. Sometimes even at EU internal borders. Where individuals apply for asylum, this biometric data will ordinarily feed into Eurodac, the European Asylum Database. However, as reported by the Border Violence Monitoring Network, often individuals are denied entry or violently pushed back even after providing their biometric data to border police.
It is not clear how this biometric data is used in such cases. The information may be entered into the Schengen Information System, where countries must enter alerts for refusal of entry or stay on people found to be staying in the EU "irregularly", although normally an official entry ban notice under the Return Directive is required for biometric data to be entered in the SIS. An Alert in the Schengen Information System may lead to an Entry ban, Deportation, or otherwise compromise an individuals to seek asylum or obtain a regular status.