The Donald Trump administration has established a collaboration between the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) through which the data of all air passengers reaches immigration authorities. The transfer of information facilitates the detention of migrants and their expulsion.
The agreement, which began in March, involves immigration officials being able to receive information about which flight passengers subject to a deportation order are going to take and thus detain them before boarding. This was revealed The New York Timeswho had access to the documents that prove it.
That’s what happened to 19-year-old Any Lucía López Belloza, who was arrested at Boston’s Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. López Belloza was a freshman in college and decided to surprise his family, who live in Texas, for Thanksgiving. The young woman was arrested as she was about to board the plane, because she was the subject of a deportation order.
The number of people who have been arrested thanks to the collaboration between the two federal agencies, both under the Department of Homeland Security, is not known. The New York newspaper also verified that the October expulsion of Marta Brizeyda Renderos Leiva, a Salvadoran arrested at the Salt Lake City airport, was a consequence of the transfer of information.
Airlines already shared passenger data with the TSA for security reasons, in an effort to detect terrorists. The use of data to detain passengers for immigration reasons is new, however, and would aim to increase deportations. Migrant defense organizations have already reacted to this increase in surveillance.
“This practice does nothing but terrorize communities and punish people for simply living their lives. No one should have to worry that a plane trip to visit family or go on vacation could result in them being handcuffed and deported,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement.
Documents obtained by The New York Times reveal that López Belloza’s arrest involved the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, an ICE office in California that sends information to immigration agents across the country and directs local jails to detain migrants.
“This sends a message to migrants that they are under constant surveillance and that their rights can be taken away at any time. And all Americans should be equally concerned, because the erosion of immigrants’ rights is the wake-up call to the erosion of all our rights,” Awawdeh warned.
Trump is unhappy with the pace of ICE detentions, which is failing to meet his goal of deporting a million aliens in the first year of his second term. The government has promoted the exchange of data between different federal agencies to facilitate arrests. One of the most controversial was the collaboration between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ICE. The transmission of taxpayer data to the immigration authorities is currently blocked by a court decision.
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