According to a source within CBP, flights carrying 153 mostly Special Interest Aliens (SIA) from San Diego, California, arrived in Laredo, Texas. Most will be processed and released to non-government charity shelters across the Lone Star state. The source said the migrants flown into Texas on Immigration and Customs Enforcement aircraft will be released to a local Catholic Charities shelter in Laredo once processed.
The migrants will likely be moved to the city of San Antonio’s Migrant Resource Center, where many will stay at the FEMA-reimbursed shelter while shelter staff members make commercial air travel arrangements for them. Once the arrangements are completed, the source says the group of mostly Special Interest Aliens will likely fly to other parts of the United States.
The source says the ICE flight manifests showed 90 Special Interest Aliens arrived at a processing center in Laredo last week. The SIAs on the flight included 51 migrants from Turkey, 20 from China, nine from Jordan, four from Egypt, two from Uzbekistan, two from Bangladesh, and one each from Somalia and Pakistan. The flight also carried 35 Vietnamese nationals, 12 Indian nationals, two Nepalese citizens, and one each from Cameroon, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, countries not considered Special Interest Countries by the Department of Justice.
The source, not authorized to speak to the media, told Breitbart Texas the migrant processing is an arduously slow task due to the language barriers that require the use of telephonic interpreters. The source says there has been a surge in Special Interest Aliens encountered at several locations across the southwest border. As reported by Breitbart Texas, the small border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, a mere 120 miles north of Laredo, has recently seen an increase in the arrest of migrants from countries on the DOJ list of Special Interest Countries.
According to the source, many of the migrants received from California were single adult males and females. The source also said it is concerning that Texas is already experiencing more special interest migrants.
“We hope that this is Kamala Harris’ last gift to the Border Patrol in Texas, but I fear there will be more to come between now and November,” the source emphasized.
Many of the migrants considered Special Interest Aliens are crossing the border illegally and hail from countries subject to travel warnings by the U.S. State Department due to terrorism. Regardless, the source says, “Most will be released shortly unless we uncover significant intelligence indicating they pose a threat to the United States. That is unlikely.”
According to the source, the migrants flown to Texas from California who are not considered Special Interest Aliens will also likely be released. For some, the lack of strong diplomatic relations with their home countries under the Biden-Harris administration will make a return of the migrants difficult, if not impossible. Complicating the matter for migrants who can be returned is the lack of necessary resources to conduct the removals.
“When you spend your time flying migrants on ICE aircraft inside the United States and not back to their home country, you just don’t have the ICE air platforms available to remove them to countries that will accept the returns,” the source lamented.
An exclusive Breitbart Texas report revealed that more than 61,000 Special Interest Aliens were encountered by the Border Patrol in fiscal year 2023. The number of migrants from Special Interest countries climbed by more than 140 percent from the previous fiscal year, when more than 25,500 were encountered along the southwest border. More than 86,000 Special Interest Aliens have illegally entered the United States in the previous two years.
According to a 2019 DHS fact sheet, the term “Significant Interest Alien” is defined as follows:
Generally, an SIA is a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests. Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. DHS analysis includes an examination of travel patterns, points of origin, and/or travel segments that are tied to current assessments of national and international threat environments.
This does not mean that all SIAs are “terrorists,” but rather that the travel and behavior of such individuals indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation. The term SIA does not indicate any specific derogatory information about the individual – and DHS has never indicated that the SIA designation means more than that.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyClarkBBTX.