McALLEN, Texas — The U.S. government has begun requiring migrants without passports to submit to facial recognition technology to take domestic flights, under a change that sparked confusion among immigrant and advocacy groups in Texas this week.
It’s not clear exactly when the change took effect, but several migrants on flights from South Texas told advocacy groups Tuesday that they believed they were being turned away. The migrants included people who had used the government’s online appointment system to continue their immigration cases. Advocates also raised concerns about migrants who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border before being processed by Border Patrol agents and released to continue their immigration cases.
The Transportation Security Administration told The Associated Press on Thursday that migrants without proper photo identification who want to board flights must submit to facial recognition technology to verify their identities using Department of Homeland Security data.
“If TSA is unable to match their identity with DHS data, they will also be denied access to secured areas of the airport and will be denied entry into the airport,” the agency said.
Agency officials did not say when TSA made the change, only that it was recent and not in response to a specific security threat.
It is not clear how many migrants are involved. Some have a foreign passport.
Migrants and tense communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have become increasingly dependent on airlines to get people to other cities where they have friends and family and where Border Patrol often orders them to go there to process their immigration claims.
Groups that work with migrants said the change caught them off guard. Migrants wondered if they would lose hundreds of dollars spent on non-refundable tickets. After a group of migrants returned to a shelter in McAllen on Tuesday saying they had been turned away at the airport, attorneys exchanged messages trying to figure out what the new TSA procedures were.
“It caused tremendous suffering for people,” said the Rev. Brian Strassburger, executive director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, a Texas group that provides humanitarian assistance and advocacy for migrants.
Strassburger said migrants previously could board flights with documents they had from Border Patrol.
An Ecuadorian woman traveling with her child told the AP she was able to board the plane easily on Wednesday after agents took her photo at the TSA checkpoint.
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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.