HR275-119

What This Bill Does

The Special Interest Alien Reporting Act requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to publish, by the seventh day of each month, a public DHS webpage report and submit the same report to the House Homeland Security Committee and Senate homeland-security oversight staff. Each report must state the total number of special interest aliens DHS encountered in the prior month and break the data down by nationality or country of last habitual residence, geographic region, whether the encounter happened at land, air, or sea ports of entry, between ports of entry, or in the interior, and whether the nationality or country is a covered nation. The first report is retrospective and must cover January 20, 2021 through January 19, 2025. The bill defines special interest aliens as aliens whose travel patterns indicate a potential national-security risk.

Who Benefits and How

House Homeland Security Committee members, Senate homeland-security oversight staff, border-security analysts, state homeland-security officials, local emergency-management officials, immigration policy researchers, national-security policymakers, and public transparency advocates gain recurring, public, country-specific and location-specific encounter data that can be used to evaluate DHS border trends and special-interest-alien risk patterns.

Who Bears the Burden and How

The Secretary of Homeland Security, DHS reporting staff, CBP field offices, ICE data offices, DHS web-publication staff, privacy and civil-liberties reviewers, and special interest aliens whose nationality and regional encounter data are reported in aggregate bear burdens because DHS must collect monthly encounter data, disaggregate it by several categories, identify covered nations, publish it publicly, brief congressional committees, and maintain privacy safeguards around sensitive national-security classifications.

Key Provisions

• Requires DHS to publish monthly public reports on special interest alien encounters.
• Requires reports to identify total encounters, nationalities, countries of last habitual residence, geographic regions, and covered-nation status.
• Requires reports to specify whether encounters occurred at ports of entry, between ports, or inside the United States.
• Requires the first report to cover the January 20, 2021 through January 19, 2025 period.
• Defines special interest aliens based on travel-pattern analysis showing potential national-security risk.