U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released a press release yesterday stating its officers in coordination with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers arrested 11 crew members in Boston as part of phase 3 of “Operation Tidal Wave” for their alleged part in the “reception and disbursement of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child sexual exploitation material (CSEM).”
The release identified the eleven men as “aliens” / “cruise ship crew members” who are allegedly associated with the possession, use, procurement, production, or distribution of CSEM and CSAM.
The federal government produced one photograph (above) of four of the arrested crew members standing in front of a CBP van along with two CBP officers with their backs to the camera.
CBP explained that during the latest phase of the “Tidal Wave” operation, conducted from August 14-16, 2026, CBP officers and HSI agents “boarded the cruise ships Volendam and Norwegian Breakaway encountering the 11 individuals—nine citizens of the Philippines, one citizen of Indonesia, and one citizen of Nicaragua.”
Like other crew member deportations by CBP which we previously reported on, the eleven crew members were processed for removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act for alleged “crimes involving moral turpitude.” And like other similar arrests, the crew members were not in fact charged with any type of crime but were summarily deported from the U.S.
The three phases of operation “Tidal Wave” have resulted in over 50 crew members being deported. A breakdown of each is below:
- Phase 1 (San Diego – April 2026): 27 crew members were formally stripped of their U.S. visas and deported to their home countries. This group consisted of 25 individuals from the Philippines, one from Indonesia, and one from Portugal.
- Phase 2 (San Juan – June/July 2026): 15 crew members were targeted. 14 faced administrative immigration removal and one unidentified crew member faced federal criminal prosecution.
- Phase 3 (Boston – August 2026): 11 crew members were intercepted and placed into administrative deportation proceedings after federal agents boarded ships at the Port of Boston.
Operation “Tidal Wave” is part of a wider federal effort targeting employees on cruise ships that has led to over 200 crew members being deported for alleged possession of CSEM and CSAM,
CBP touted in its release that under President Trump, it has “arrested and removed thousands of criminal aliens from the country – including gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers – to make our communities safer.”
But the CBP omits from its hyperbolic summary the fact that there have been a number of cases in which CBP and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials made entirely false claims about people’s criminality. For example, last year CBP agents shot at three U.S. citizens (Marimar Martinez, Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti) a total of eighteen times, killing two. Homeland Security officials then lied about the crimes they committed, and defamed and falsely accused the victims of being “domestic terrorists” among other false and derogatory statements about their deaths that were subsequently proven to be false and clearly contradicted by video evidence.
If U.S. federal immigration agents can murder U.S. citizens in the streets of America and thereafter lie and escape all accountability, what are the chances that crew members from Indonesia, Nicaragua and the Philippines on foreign-flagged cruise ships will be treated fairly?
Only one of the last 53 crew members accused of possessing child pornography was criminally charged with a crime. If a crew member actually has possession of and reviews CSAM, he should be arrested and prosecuted, and the U.S. government’s allegations should be tested and scrutinized. It is grossly unfair for the CBP to present no evidence of a crime (particularly such a heinous crime involving child pornography), automatically and summarily deny a ship employee his fundamental rights, strip him of his 10 year seaman visa, and then send him back to his home country where he faces humiliation and unemployment, and his family will endure severe economic hardship.
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Image credit: Volendam – Gordon Leggett / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 commons / wikimedia; Norwegian Breakaway – Master0Garfield – Own work, CC0 commons / wikimedia