Safeguarding Americans From Extremist Risk (SAFER) at the Border Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The SAFER at the Border Act adds immigration-law definitions for known terrorist, suspected terrorist, and special interest alien. A known terrorist includes someone arrested, charged, indicted, convicted of terrorism-related crime, or identified as a terrorist or terrorist-organization member by statute, executive order, international legal obligation, or U.N. Security Council resolution. A special interest alien is someone whose travel patterns and other available information suggest a potential national-security risk due to a known or potential terrorism nexus. The bill also rewrites parole authority so DHS may parole arriving aliens only case by case for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, but may not parole refugees or aliens designated by State or DHS officials as espionage, sabotage, unlawful-activity, overthrow, criminal, transnational-criminal, terrorist, terrorism-watchlist, or related security risks.
Who Benefits and How
Border security officials benefit because immigration law would contain explicit terrorism and special-interest-alien definitions. Counterterrorism screening staff benefit from parole bars tied to watchlists, terrorism associations, and security-risk designations. Communities concerned about border security benefit from narrower parole authority for security-risk categories. Congressional homeland security oversight staff benefit from clearer statutory categories for reviewing DHS parole decisions.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Refugees seeking parole lose parole eligibility under the bill's categorical bar. Special interest aliens face formal statutory classification and greater screening consequences. Aliens on terrorism watchlists or designated security-risk lists are barred from parole. The Secretary of Homeland Security loses discretion to parole several national-security or terrorism-related categories.
Key Provisions
- Defines known terrorist, suspected terrorist, and special interest alien in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
- Restricts parole to case-by-case urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit for arriving aliens.
- Prohibits parole for refugees and several terrorism, criminal, espionage, sabotage, overthrow, and watchlist categories.
- Requires DHS to return paroled aliens to custody when the purposes of parole have been served.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Defines known terrorists, suspected terrorists, and special interest aliens in immigration law and bars DHS parole for refugees, terrorism-related inadmissible aliens, watchlist-listed aliens, and several security-risk categories.
Key Policy Areas
Immigration, Border Security, Counterterrorism
Primary Purpose
Defines known terrorists, suspected terrorists, and special interest aliens in immigration law and bars DHS parole for refugees, terrorism-related inadmissible aliens, watchlist-listed aliens, and several security-risk categories.
Policy Domains
Resolution provisions
Identified Gains
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Border security officials
- Counterterrorism screening staff
- Communities concerned about border security
- Congressional homeland security oversight staff
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Identified Costs
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation- Refugees seeking parole
- Special interest aliens
- Aliens on terrorism watchlists
- Secretary of Homeland Security
Contextual inference, no direct clause citation
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMr. Langworthy (for himself, Mr. DesJarlais, Ms. Tenney, Mr. Fleischmann, …
Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Introduced in House
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology