Related videos:
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) shared information on over 31,000 travelers with ICE, resulting in more than 800 immigrant arrests, according to a report by Reuters on Tuesday based on internal data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
According to Telemundo, the mechanism used was the Secure Flight program from the TSA, created in 2007 as a counter-terrorism measure following the September 11 attacks, whose original purpose was to screen passengers against federal government watch lists, not to carry out immigration operations.
Under the second term of Donald Trump, this program was redirected to cross-reference passenger data with ICE databases about individuals with deportation orders, with lists of travelers sent several times a week starting in March 2025.
The DHS defended the arrests by arguing that all those detained had final removal orders.
The case that sparked the public debate was the arrest of Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, a Guatemalan mother, and her nine-year-old daughter, Wendy Godinez-Lopez, on March 22 at San Francisco International Airport, following a TSA alert.
Both had a final deportation order issued in May 2019 for failing to attend immigration hearings.
A video of the arrest showed Lopez-Jimenez on her knees, crying as she was handcuffed in front of her daughter, generating extensive media coverage and political pressure.
The senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff launched a formal request to the DHS for details regarding the data-sharing practices between the TSA and ICE following that arrest.
The representative John Garamendi described the practice as a fundamental civil liberties issue and warned that the TSA should not verify immigration status, but only travel documents.
Civil rights defenders described the measure as an alarming expansion of surveillance that erodes privacy protections and instills fear in immigrant communities.
Immigration lawyers also reported the case of an Irish couple with more than twenty years in the United States and pending permanent residency applications, detained at a Florida airport in 2025 in front of their seven and ten-year-old children, and subsequently deported.
A former ICE official noted that 75% of the cases identified through the TSA-ICE program resulted in arrests in his region.
The situation is worsened by the deployment of ICE agents in 14 airports on March 23, announced by Trump two days earlier, amid a staffing crisis at the TSA caused by a partial government shutdown that left employees without pay for over a month, reported Artículo 66.
ICE and TSA are both agencies of the DHS, which facilitates the exchange of data between them without the need for external interagency agreements.
The Trump administration also sought access to data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) —blocked by courts— and reached an agreement with the federal health agency to access data on 79 million Medicaid recipients.
The Trump administration has set a goal of deporting one million people per year; 2.6 million immigrants have left the United States since Trump's return, including 650,000 who were arrested and deported and approximately two million who self-deported.
Filed under: