House passes bill to make ‘special interest’ migrant encounters public
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Special Interest Alien Reporting Act of 2025, requiring the Department of homeland Security (DHS) to publicly disclose statistics on illegal immigrants apprehended at the U.S. borders from “special interest” countries, which are identified as posing national security threats. The measure was approved with a vote of 231-182, reflecting the GOP-controlled House’s push for stricter immigration policies. Introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the bill seeks to enhance openness regarding encounters with individuals from nations like China, Iran, afghanistan, and Syria. Greene argued that the American public deserves access to this information, emphasizing the need for accountability in government operations.The bill mandates the DHS to publish monthly data on such arrests, which has not been consistently released by the agency in past administrations.
House passes bill to require DHS to publicly disclose ‘special interest’ migrant border encounters
The House has passed legislation to require the federal government to make public the number of illegal immigrants from “special interest” countries arrested at U.S. borders.
Lawmakers voted 231-182 Thursday afternoon to pass the Special Interest Alien Reporting Act of 2025, legislation that would force the Department of Homeland Security to be transparent with the public about immigrants who illegally enter the country. The effort is the latest by the GOP-controlled chamber to impose harsher immigration policies.
The bill, introduced in January by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), would require DHS-agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection to release statistics monthly on the number of illegal immigrants from certain countries that pose national security threats to the United States, as well as the area of the border where they were apprehended.
Greene introduced the bill in January following the border crisis that erupted under President Joe Biden’s administration.
The Biden-era border crisis not only went beyond previous surges in illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border in terms of the duration and number of people seen, but also by the origin of certain countries seen at such high volumes, specifically China, Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria.
“Customs and Border Protection faced an unprecedented number of special interest aliens from 26 countries that the Department of Homeland Security has determined pose the greatest national security and counterintelligence threats,” Greene said Monday in a speech before the House Committee on Rules.
The DHS defines a “special interest alien” as 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.”
Border agents encountered 1.7 million people from special interest countries during the Biden administration. Of that figure, 1,500 Iranian nationals were arrested at the border, and half of them were let into the U.S.
However, the DHS did not release figures on “special interest aliens” under Biden, with reported data only published due to leaks obtained by media outlets.
CBP releases data monthly about the number of illegal immigrants that its Border Patrol agents apprehended attempting to enter the country, as well as some nationalities and demographics of those figures. Limited information on suspected or known terrorists caught at the border is also released every month. “Special interest alien” figures are not a part of that data release.
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“The American people deserve to see data similar to the information on the terrorist screening data set,” Greene said Tuesday. “Releasing encounter statistics on special interest aliens would not include sensitive information, but general encounter information, which increases the transparency and accountability that are critical to the health of our constitutional republic. After all, it’s the American people that pay for the government because they’re the taxpayers. They deserve to know.”
The DHS would also be required to publish monthly “special interest alien” statistics as early as January 2021, when Biden took office.
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