Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dressed in civilian clothing are arresting individuals with expired visas at check-in counters and boarding gates of U.S. airports, according to an investigation by the New York Times based on documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and interviews with attorneys for more than 25 detainees.
The operations have been recorded at least at 15 airports in recent weeks, with people from more than twelve countries among the arrested, including spouses of U.S. citizens and workers in the technology sector.
The tactic represents an expansion of the cooperation agreement between the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and ICE, which began deploying 50 agents per shift at 14 airports since March and formalized its scope on May 5.
The program, which originally targeted individuals with final deportation orders, now includes those who simply have expired visas, potentially reaching hundreds of thousands of people who were not a deportation priority in previous administrations unless they had criminal records.
DHS defended the operations with a strong statement: "This Administration is diligently working to ensure that undocumented foreigners can no longer fly, unless it is for voluntary deportation."
One of the most widely reported cases is that of Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old Ecuadorian who was arrested on July 20 at Denver International Airport while attempting to travel to Oakland, California.
Morales had legally entered in 2023 with an exchange visa and submitted a request to remain in the country before his visa expired on January 4, 2025.
When she scanned her boarding pass, an alarm went off and two plainclothes agents intercepted her. The arrest was recorded and widely circulated on social media. A judge set her bail at $3,000.
Another case that generated significant attention was that of Iryna Gorb, a Ukrainian citizen with over ten years of residency in California, who was arrested at San Francisco International Airport upon returning from a domestic trip to Portland.
Richmond councilwoman Doria Robinson captured the moment when the officers arrested Gorb while she shouted for help and identified herself as Ukrainian.
The DHS stated that his visa expired in May 2011 and that he remained in the country "illegally" for 15 years; he is currently in ICE custody.
Among those detained is also a woman from Uganda in a wheelchair, with an asylum application in process, who suffers from sickle cell anemia, according to her lawyer who informed the New York Times.
“In 38 years of practicing immigration law, I have never seen anything like this, and I know it is happening to many people,” stated Charles Kuck, a lawyer for an Indian engineer detained at an airport while waiting for an extension of his work permit, to the New York Times .
Arrests at airports are part of a broader escalation of the immigration policy under the Trump administration, which set a record for detentions in June 2026 with 39,563 individuals in a single month, aiming for 2,000 arrests daily, roughly double the figures recorded earlier in the year.
For the Cuban community, the impact has been particularly severe: the arrests of Cubans by ICE increased by 463% between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2026, with more than 42,000 Cubans having final deportation orders pending execution.
The economic consequences of the operations have also been documented: studies from the University of Pennsylvania, Brookings, and the University of California in Irvine estimate that the ICE raids have resulted in losses of up to 14 billion dollars in consumption and the disappearance of 668,000 jobs in metropolitan areas across the country.
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