U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended a passenger traveling into the United States from Vietnam at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston Thursday for carrying 55 dead seahorses in his luggage.
Because, as everyone clearly knows, federal law limits the number of seahorses that can be carried by a single person to four.
“Customs and Border Protection along with our partners at the Fish and Wildlife Service are committed to interrupting the international trafficking of protected and endangered species,” said CBP Port Director Charles Perez.
CBP detained the seahorses for FWS inspectors. Seahorses are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) because they are over-harvested for aquarium trade and medical research.
This isn’t the first time a foreign visitor has been detained for smuggling illegal alien seahorses across U.S. borders. Another Vietnamese passenger was stopped in September for bringing in 20 live seahorses in her baggage.
While the federal government is busy halting the dangerous influx of illegal dead sea creatures into the United States, a grand total of 23,553 illegal alien children have crossed the Southwest U.S. border unaccompanied so far in FY2016, which began in October. That’s an 89 percent increase from last year’s apprehension numbers, according to CBP.
Additionally, another 27,664 family units have been apprehended in that same time from, up 149 percent from the same period in FY2015.
And even as Americans rest easily knowing they are safe from the dangers of too many imported ocean animals, President Obama’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also released 30,558 criminal aliens already convicted of a collective 92,347 crimes back into American communities in 2014. Only three percent had been deported as of July 2015.
It's not yet known whether illegal alien seahorses brought to the United States against their will are granted adequate legal representation.