Average university that admits lots of foreign students take attendance including biometric attendance. This is especially true for universities where students are in constant crosshair of ICE/USCIS etc. This is done not because University cares about you attending but they have to comply with the law.

If you admit a student from Pakistan in your Santa Clara campus but ICE finds the student working in New Jersey, the student gets deported and University admin might face criminal charges. So any university where this is a risk factor, takes attendance seriously.

In some cases US federal government has setup fraudulent universities themselves, worked actively with Dept. of State to promote these universities in India and to Indian students studying in other universities as "no need to attend" university and then entrapped these students and their employers.