The Trump administration has expanded immigration enforcement to U.S. airports, where plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are increasingly arresting travelers with expired visas, including people awaiting immigration benefits and spouses of U.S. citizens.
The reported expansion builds on a 2025 information-sharing arrangement under which the Transportation Security Administration alerts ICE when travelers identified in immigration enforcement databases pass through airport screening, with enforcement actions identified at at least 15 airports in recent weeks.
Immigration attorneys told The Times the program now appears to extend beyond people with final deportation orders to include visa overstays with pending legal applications.
There have been at least 27 arrests in airports using this tactic, according to a document obtained by ABC News.
The arrests have occurred across the country in at least nine states from California to Virginia, and immigration lawyers are warning their clients about the risk to domestic travel.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, “DHS reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country.”
“Under President Trump, 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.”
Rosanna Berardi, a Buffalo-based immigration attorney, told ABC News that ICE has always had the power to arrest someone with a final order of removal or expired immigration status.
“What’s also new is the venue and method,” she said. “ICE is working with TSA and targeting people at check-in counters and gates, sidestepping the warrants and surveillance operations used in the past. There is no investigation or no home visit involved. It’s simply a name match at a checkpoint, and that’s what makes this approach so efficient for ICE and so unsettling for travelers.”
Berardi said now “routine air travel has turned into a legal status audit for millions of foreign national visa holders and green card applicants.”
ICE is under pressure to deliver on President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda with a goal of around 3,000 arrests a day, with recent arrests at airports reflecting an expansion of the arrangement between the TSA and ICE.
Department of Homeland Security data show the agency arrested 43,138 people in June, the highest monthly total since President Donald Trump returned to office, with more than 65,700 people in detention as of mid-July.
TSA has been sharing more information about noncitizen travelers with ICE, including on immigrants who lack criminal records but are suspected of civil immigration violations, like overstaying their visas.
Plain-clothes ICE agents are increasingly targeting foreign travelers who have overstayed U.S. visas, confronting them at check-in counters and arrival gates, with the New York Times noting “some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.”
Those being detained in some cases do not have criminal records and have valid work authorization or parole documents.
Plainclothes officers arrested Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old Ecuadorian woman, as she was boarding her Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland on July 20, with friends, fellow passengers, and airline employees watching as immigration agents detained Rojas on the jetway before taking her by force to a Homeland Security van waiting on the tarmac.
Morales Rojas’ attorneys said she entered the country lawfully in January 2023 with legal status that allowed her to work as an au pair.
“These two huge guys rushed in behind us … and someone slammed the door behind us,” her friend told CNN. “I was kind of terrified being stuck in this room with these men who were about to steal my friend.”
Her friend Alycia Dantzker described Rojas as caring, calm and wise, saying “She knows so much about babies. She’s got this calm, a lot of wisdom, and just really, really smart and incredibly kind and caring.”
The moment ICE agents detained Morales Rojas at the gate has been viewed more than 1 million times online.
“I couldn’t possibly keep up with the comments… and I think it has gotten Chantal the attention that she really should get for being unlawfully detained,” Dantzker said.
Attorney Joe Moravec told CNN that his client — a woman who entered the United States legally and has a pending asylum case — was detained at a D.C.-area airport while traveling home to Texas to attend her father’s funeral, remaining in detention in Virginia.
An attempted arrest at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on July 13 involved Phu Nguyen, 57, in the US on an expired visa, when two agents were trying to forcibly detain the man as onlookers confronted them.
“After a ‘crowd of anti-ICE agitators surrounded officers,’ they stopped the arrest to ‘de-escalate the situation and for officer safety,'” a statement from the department said.
“In 38 years practicing immigration law, I had never seen this,” Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck said of the airport arrests representing a dramatic change in immigration enforcement.
Border Czar Tom Homan stated that about 60 percent of those arrested are criminals with a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges, meaning they are arresting non-criminals and overstayers.
Homan said “they need to go home,” adding “the final orders—they had their due process” and “They’ve been ordered removed from the country.”
In the viral moment on the tarmac at Denver International Airport,
a woman was arrested on a jet bridge as she tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight on July 20, with the Department of Homeland Security saying Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas of Ecuador was arrested by ICE after she overstayed her visa, which expired on January 4.
Her attorney, however, said she filed the appropriate paperwork before her visa expired and has remained in the country with authorization while her immigration case is pending.
Morales Rojas’ attorneys challenged her arrest and detention in court, and she is set to be released on bond.
Her friend told CNN “These two huge guys rushed in behind us … and someone slammed the door behind us,” with video showing two men in plainclothes speaking with Morales Rojas before she’s escorted out of the jet bridge and her friend yelling to other passengers “ICE is here, help us!”
White House border czar Tom Homan confirmed on Fox News that ICE agents deployed at TSA security checkpoints will continue enforcing immigration law, stating “we’re not gonna stop doing this job.”
ICE agents attempted to arrest Iryna Gorb, a Ukrainian national, on July 22 near gate B7 at San Francisco International Airport, with Richmond, California Councilwoman Doria Robinson waiting for a flight when she said she heard a woman screaming “please help me.”
Fundraising efforts have also grown for Southwest flight attendant Lorenzo Thompson, a Jamaican national who was arrested by ICE at Nashville International Airport on July 14 after remaining in the country following authorization that expired.
Southwest told CNN it follows applicable state and federal laws, saying “The airline has provided guidance to employees to help ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement agencies prior to interactions in the gate areas.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin signaled the administration’s approach during a July 17 news conference.