The Transportation Security Administration is quietly handing over the names of every airline passenger to U.S. immigration authorities as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation program, The New York Times reported Friday.
According to the report, TSA shares lists of travelers several times a week with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people,” the Times said.
Both TSA and ICE operate under the Department of Homeland Security, and the move marks a sharp expansion of information sharing to target individuals under deportation orders. The Times notes that the extent of arrests stemming from this program is unclear.
But the impact is already evident. Documents obtained by the newspaper show that the program led to the Nov. 20 arrest at Boston’s Logan Airport of Any Lucía López Belloza, a college student deported to Honduras two days later. López had been traveling to visit family in Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday. According to previous reporting by the Times, López was brought to the United States from Honduras at age 7, and her family said neither they nor she were aware she was subject to a deportation order.
A former ICE official told The Times that roughly 75 percent of cases flagged under the program in that official’s region resulted in arrests, highlighting how effectively the agency is leveraging TSA’s passenger data.
“The message to those in the country illegally is clear: The only reason you should be flying is to self-deport home,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
In a statement to CNBC, a Homeland Security spokesperson defended the program. “This is nothing new,” the spokesperson said. “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. 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.”
Historically, ICE has avoided interfering with domestic travel. The new partnership with TSA, which began quietly in March, represents a significant shift, increasing coordination between federal agencies as part of what the Trump administration calls the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.
Airline passengers have long been subject to federal scrutiny. Airlines routinely provide passenger information to TSA after a flight is booked, and that data is checked against national security databases, including the Terrorist Screening Dataset, which tracks known or suspected terrorists. Now, that same system is being leveraged to identify immigrants subject to deportation.
