Border patrol agents have reportedly arrested thousands of “special interest aliens” who were attempting to cross into the United States through the southern border over the last two years, according to leaked federal data.
“Special interest aliens” are defined by the Department of Homeland Security as any person who “potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests.”
Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was leaked to Fox News. It reportedly shows that thousands of SIAs were arrested between October 2021 and October 2023.
While the data provides the total number of encounters with such migrants, it does not specify how many were removed from or released into the United States.
Similarly, it does not indicate how many encounters were had at ports of entry or provide estimates of how many have entered the country without being noticed.
Multiple sources from CBP reportedly confirmed the data, which notes that there were encounters with 30,830 foreign nationals from Turkey, 15,594 from Mauritania, and 13,624 from Uzbekistan, per Fox News.
There were also encounters with 6,386 foreign nationals from Afghanistan, 3,153 from Egypt, and 1,613 from Pakistan.
At the lower end of the scale, CBP had encounters with 659 foreign nationals from Iran, 538 from Syria, 185 from Jordan, 164 from Lebanon, 139 from Yemen, and 123 from Iraq, according to Fox News.
The data leak and subsequent reporting follow reports that a record number of people on the FBI’s terror watch list were apprehended during fiscal year 2023.
Between October 2022 and August 2023, 151 non-U.S. citizens were processed and determined to be on the watch list, which is a significant jump from the previous record of 98 people in fiscal year 2022, according to Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT).
“I’m very concerned about potential sleeper cells that can be coming across our southern border. I asked Border Patrol agents how Syrian, how Lebanese, how Middle Eastern country citizens can come in, and they told me they fly first and foremost to [an] airport in the Middle East — could be Saudi Arabia, could be in Dubai — and then from there, they take a flight to Colombia,” Daines said, per a press release. “Then from Colombia. They’re taking a trip oftentimes by bus across Central America, across Mexico [to] our southern border.”
In addition to the high number of encounters with individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list, there was also a record-high number of encounters with unlawful migrants overall.
There were 218,777 encounters reported by CBP in September, which has been the single highest number of monthly encounters since 2000, according to the Daily Caller.
In an attempt to slow down the number of unlawful crossings into the Lone Star State, Gov. Greg Abbott recently requested $1.5 billion from the Texas Legislature to ramp up border wall construction at the Texas-Mexico border, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.