People smuggling

'A dangerous world': What's at stake when Syrian refugees are smuggled to US

On July 27, 2015, five men appeared on the Mexican side of the sprawling Laredo port of entry at the United States border in Texas. They were all from Homs, Syria, which had seen ferocious fighting between ISIS and Syrian government forces over the previous months. All were in their early to mid-20s, except one, who was in his early 40s. And all five requested asylum in the United States.

This presented an immediate dilemma for U.S. officials. Who were these men? What did they want? And most pressingly, exactly how did five military-age males from one of the most gruesome battlefields in the world make their way to the U.S. border with Mexico? 

Answers to many of those questions were spelled out in a detailed memo written by the Laredo field office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security investigators. The document, which was obtained by CNBC, details the operations of a previously unreported entity the U.S. government calls the "Barakat Alien Smuggling Organization."