The Trump administration’s Transportation Security Administration is reportedly giving immigration officials details of all air travelers as part of the president’s push to carry out an unprecedented mass deportation campaign.
As part of the program, the TSA shares the data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement multiple times per week, according to The New York Times.
Individuals in the TSA data who were later found in ICE databases had a high rate of eventually being arrested and deported, a former ICE official told the outlet.
The data-sharing program appears to have led to the deportation of Any Lucía López Belloza, 19, a Honduran who was arrested at Boston Logan Airport last month and sent to her home country, which she hadn’t seen since she was a child, The NYT found.
The Trump administration has confirmed such efforts are underway.
“This is nothing new,” the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and the TSA, told CNBC.
“Back in February, Secretary [Kristi] Noem reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country and do so without identification,” the spokesperson added. “Under President Trump, TSA and DHS will no longer tolerate this. This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”
This fall, U.K.-based political commentator Sami Hamdi was held by ICE for more than two weeks at the San Francisco airport, though it’s unclear if the TSA data-sharing program was responsible.
Hamdi, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist, alleges he was targeted for his views. He returned to London voluntarily without any order of deportation, his family said, alleging he was held in poor conditions in the U.S.
The Trump administration has reportedly leaned on immigration agents to carry out a (so far unmet) target of 3,000 arrests per day to achieve the president’s campaign promises to swiftly deport millions of people.
As part of this effort, the White House has used federal data as a key weapon.
The Department of Homeland Security now has access to personal data on nearly every American, while the administration has threatened to withhold SNAP food benefits from mostly Democrat-run states if they don’t turn over immigration data on recipients.
The White House has also sought to leverage tax and Veterans Affairs data as part of its immigration campaign.
