The United States government has begun requiring migrants without passports to use face recognition technology to board domestic flights, a development that has caused confusion among immigrants and advocacy groups in Texas.
It is unclear when the move went into effect, but some migrants boarding flights out of South Texas on Tuesday told advocacy groups that they believed they were being turned away.
The migrants included those who used the government’s online appointment system to pursue their immigration cases. Advocates were particularly concerned about individuals who had unlawfully crossed the US-Mexico border before being processed by Border Patrol officials and freed to continue their immigration cases.
The Transportation Security Administration told The Associated Press on Thursday that migrants without valid picture identification who wish to board aircraft must use facial recognition technology to authenticate their identities using Department of Homeland Security records.
“If TSA cannot match their identity to DHS records, they will also be denied entry into the secure areas of the airport and will be denied boarding,” the agency stated in a statement.
TSA officials did not specify when the change occurred, only that it was recent and not in response to a specific security threat.
It’s unclear how many migrants will be affected. Some hold foreign passports.
Migrants and strained communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have become more reliant on airlines to transport them to other places where they have friends and family, and where Border Patrol frequently orders them to go to pursue their immigration claims.
Groups that help with migrants reported that the development caught them off guard. Migrants worried about losing hundreds of dollars on nonrefundable tickets. After a group of migrants returned to a McAllen shelter on Tuesday, claiming they had been turned away at the airport, activists exchanged messages to discover what the new TSA protocols were.
“It caused a tremendous amount of distress for people,” said Rev. Brian Strassburger, executive director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, a Texas-based organization that provides humanitarian relief and advocacy to migrants.
Strassburger stated that previously, migrants could board flights with documentation from the Border Patrol.
One Ecuadorian woman flying with her toddler told the Associated Press that she was able to board easily on Wednesday after allowing police to photograph her at the TSA screening.