Thousands of ‘Special Interest Aliens’ Posing Potential National Security Risks Entering via CBP One App

For the two-plus decades after 9/11, professionals of the U.S. homeland security enterprise have fretted about illegal immigrants from foreign nations where Islamic terrorism groups operate who, without invitation or authorization, breach the Southwest Border and enter the country every year.

The professional presumption that these immigrants pose a greater national security risk than other illegal entrants has remained great enough, in fact, that federal agencies still tag them for enhanced security screening when encountered as “Special Interest Aliens” or SIAs (or due to the Biden administration’s aversion to the word “alien”, “Special Interest Migrants” or SIMs) to help ensure the strangers are not clandestine terrorist agents.

But new records released to the Center for Immigration Studies last week as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit reveal that the Biden administration has been authorizing thousands of SIAs for escorted entries through land ports along the border since at least May 2021, using “CBP One” online interfaces such as a mobile phone app. Using this program, the administration has authorized the paroles into the country of some 7,332 SIAs from 24 of the roughly 35-40 U.S.-designated countries, including smatterings from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but the largest numbers coming from Muslim-majority former Soviet republics in Central Asia such as the Kyrgyz Republic, also known as Kyrgyzstan, (3,852) and Uzbekistan (1,843).1