The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the federal agency tasked with overseeing security at U.S. airports, is providing the names of domestic air travelers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a new report from the New York Times. Historically, TSA hasn’t been involved in hunting down people for ICE, but that’s apparently changed during the second Trump era.
TSA now sends ICE lists “multiple times a week” of people who will be traveling through U.S. airports, and those are compared to databases of travelers the Trump regime claims are subject to deportation, according to the Times. We say “claims” because ICE has deported people who are not subject to deportation, the most famous case being Kilmar Abrego Garcia who a judge ordered released on Friday.
The Times notes that it’s unclear how many people have been arrested at airports under the new information-sharing program between TSA and ICE. But it appears that Any Lucía López Belloza, a 19-year-old abducted at Boston Logan Airport on Nov. 20 and deported to Honduras just a couple of days later, was napped using this system. Lopez Belloza, who had been in the U.S. since she was just 7 years old, was ferried out of the country despite the fact that a judge ruled she should not be deported on Nov. 21, according to a different report from the Times.
The new cooperation between TSA and ICE started in March, according to the Times. The Trump regime announced a couple of months ago that just 7,500 refugees will be admitted to the U.S. during the 2026 fiscal year, which started in October. Most of the refugees will be white South Africans, according to the Associated Press. Last year’s ceiling was 125,000 refugees under President Joe Biden.
The new report from the Times notes that one reason ICE agents like arresting people at airports is that they’ve already been screened for weapons. Masked federal agents have invaded many cities with their terrorizing tactics and it’s a common question among social media pundits who ask why there haven’t been more shoot-outs in the streets. Given America’s love for guns, it’s fairly baffling, though Trump’s federal agents have shot unarmed people while sweeping cities to harass anyone who isn’t white.
President Trump is a racist who’s said things that would’ve been considered unseemly for a president to say publicly even a hundred years ago. During an Oval Office appearance on Dec. 2, Trump said people from Somalia were “garbage.”
“They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, okay?” Trump said. “Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
On Tuesday, Trump called nations like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Somalia “shithole countries,” a term he’s used before. And while Trump’s defenders will often insist it’s about crime, his more Nazi-adjacent supporters know the score. His efforts to expel immigrants is about race.
It’s extremely unusual for TSA to be handing ICE lists of passengers so that they can run a deportation program. And Reuters reporter Brad Heath, whose beat is criminal justice, helped put it in perspective: “To give you a sense of how big a departure this year, the government doesn’t do this for wanted criminals,” Heath wrote.
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