ICE officers have expanded their enforcement efforts at the nation’s airports, where their partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) — a sister DHS agency — and post-9/11 security protocols give them significant advantages. Airlines and their employees are now “pushing back” on immigration enforcement at these gateways to the skies, though many of their concerns appear more closely linked to social-media misunderstandings of the law than any legitimate concerns. Ignore the hype and understand that immigration enforcement at airport terminals is still extremely limited — and recommended, if not expected, by both Congress and the 9/11 Commission.
The Latest “Summer of the Shark”
First, keep some figures in mind when considering the size of this “expansion”.
The Center has determined that the unauthorized population hit 15.8 million by January 2025, “driven primarily by illegal immigration” during the Biden administration, a figure that may have fallen by about 1.6 million in the first six months of the Trump II administration — or maybe less than that, because by definition, the current illegal alien population is difficult to measure with certainty.
More than 2.794 million travelers passed through TSA checkpoints on August 6 alone (the last reporting day as of this writing), a figure that hit 2.955 million on May 21, but that stood at just 1.882 million on July 4 (which is why airlines used to offer specials on national holidays).
On August 3 (when about 2.727 million people passed through TSA checkpoints), NBC News reported immigration officers were “averaging between 20 to 40 arrests per day” at the nation’s airports, up from fewer than 10 per day in May 2025.
In other words, on the high side, ICE officers were arresting about .0015 percent of TSA-screened passengers at the nation’s airports, an arrest total accounting for .0028 percent of the total unauthorized population (assuming all those arrested were illegal aliens or otherwise removable).
Moreover, given there are 5,146 public airports in the United States, and “nearly 440 airports” with TSA screening, the odds any given airport will see any ICE arrests on a single day is anywhere between 9 percent and .7 percent.
Nonetheless, this phenomenon has drawn intense media scrutiny, with ABC News on August 4 claiming “ICE is ramping up arrests at airports — with ICE arresting over 30 people at airports in July” (perhaps the outlet meant “per day”, but maybe not), the New York Times reporting that “ICE Arrests Surge at Airports, Opening New Front in Deportation Drive” on July 28, and the Wall Street Journal closing the loop on August 5, with the headline, “Airlines Push Back Against ICE Enforcement at Airports”.
If this smacks of the 2001 hysteria over the “Summer of the Shark” — a media-created mania that abated only after schools went back in session and other events in September of that year that I will discuss below pushed it out of the headlines, you are likely onto something.
Paraphrasing Samuel Johnson’s take on the dog “walking on its hind legs”, an increase in ICE arrests at airports is notable not because it is “not done well” (whether it is or isn’t doesn’t seem to matter), but because the media is “surprised to find it done at all”.
“Each of these Checkpoints ... Is a Screening”
ICE’s airport operations shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who read the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and in particular chapter 12 of its final report, “What To Do? A Global Strategy”.
That chapter is a series of recommendations for actions the U.S. government could take to limit the likelihood of another mass terror attack on the homeland, and as the commission explained in chapter 12.4, “Protect Against and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks”:
When people travel internationally, they usually move through defined channels, or portals. They may seek to acquire a passport. They may apply for a visa. They stop at ticket counters, gates, and exit controls at airports and seaports. Upon arrival, they pass through inspection points. They may transit to another gate to get on an airplane. ...
Each of these checkpoints or portals is a screening — a chance to establish that people are who they say they are and are seeking access for their stated purpose, to intercept identifiable suspects, and to take effective action. [Emphasis added.]
This recommendation of the 9/11 Commission led to the passage of the REAL ID Act of 2005 (which, in the interest of full disclosure, both my colleague George Fishman and I assisted in drafting), and more specifically the document security requirements therein.
As you are likely aware, the REAL ID Act mandated the issuance of “REAL IDs”, federally compliant, state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards that are among the official documents travelers can present for identification purposes at TSA airport checkpoints.
The whole point of the REAL ID scheme is that only statutorily complaint state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards are to be presented for identification purposes at “sensitive” locations — like airports — and that to be REAL ID-compliant, states must ensure that those driver’s licenses and ID cards are only issued to U.S. citizens and aliens with lawful immigration status.
Consequently, it’s safe to say the 9/11 Commission (in this recommendation) and Congress (in passing the REAL ID Act) not only envisioned the sorts of immigration enforcement ABC News and NBC News treat as “news”, and that the Journal reports airlines and airline employees are “pushing back” against, but actively encouraged it.
The real questions are why only now, 22 years after the commission issued its final report, is ICE doing what it was clearly told to do, i.e., enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) at the nation’s airports, and why is the agency still doing so sporadically?
“Airlines Push Back Against ICE Enforcement at Airports”
Actually, there’s a third “real question”, and it has to do with the airlines’ and their employees’ responses to that enforcement.
That brings me to the Journal article, which begins:
Airlines are pushing back against federal authorities’ efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement at U.S. airports.
In one case on July 25, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight in Dallas to make an arrest, only to be rebuffed by the airline, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The incident is among at least a half-dozen similar encounters involving Southwest in the past few weeks, a person familiar with the matter said.
Let’s just stop right there.
Federal aviation regulations at 14 C.F.R. § 121.533(d) make clear that: “Each pilot in command of an aircraft is, during flight time, in command of the aircraft and crew and is responsible for the safety of the passengers, crewmembers, cargo, and airplane” (emphasis added).
When the plane is on the ground, however, the pilot, crew, and passengers are all subject to the civil authorities where the craft is located — including TSA and ICE.
Not that ICE specifically wants to “board” a Southwest plane or any other airline flight to take custody of any alien, and the Journal explains that “Top ICE leaders have told officers that they should attempt arrests at [TSA] checkpoints when possible”, which “some officials said carriers would prefer”.
TSA checkpoints can be chaotic scenes, however, with travelers jockeying to pass their luggage through x-ray scanners and cross through magnetometers. I am an experienced traveler, and have had to call family members so we can reconvene on the far side of checkpoints in the past.
Moreover, ICE won’t always know who is in line for screening at airports with numerous checkpoint lines, but they will know who has already passed through screening and entered the “sterile area” on the departure side.
Ideally, the other side of screening, where travelers collect their TSA-checked belongings, is where ICE would wait for targeted aliens, but again, it would be easy to miss someone in the mix. The gate, where the target would wait for the plane, would be the next logical — and best — place to look.
And not surprisingly, the Journal reports that, “officers have broadened their approach to make more arrests near gates and ticket counters at airports from San Francisco to Miami and Kansas City, Mo.” Some responses from airline employees to that enforcement have been what’s best described as “unusual”.
For example, the Journal picks up the narrative on the July 25 incident, where the ICE officer “tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight in Dallas to make an arrest, only to be rebuffed by the airline”, later in that article:
a tense scene unfolded after an ICE agent called out “David” in an attempt to locate the person near the gate where an Orlando, Fla.-bound Southwest flight was boarding. ...
ICE agents sought to board the plane with an administrative warrant, but an airline gate agent declined to let them board without a judicial warrant signed by a judge, according to the documents. Administrative warrants are signed by ICE supervisors, not independent federal judges, and enable officers to make arrests.
Admittedly, I’m not an expert on aviation law, and perhaps there is some fine legal issue about federal officers’ access to aircraft parked at gates I’m missing here.
But, as I have explained numerous times in the past, an administrative warrant issued under section 236(a) of the INA is not only sufficient to permit ICE’s arrest of a removable alien (hence, they “enable officers to make arrests”), it’s the only warrant Congress designated for that purpose.
Even if administrative warrants weren’t sufficient, however, recognized constitutional exceptions to the warrant requirement would appear to apply in this scenario.
Would the Southwest airline gate agent deny an FBI, DEA, or ATF agent access to a plane to arrest the very same subject? If so (which is likely), something is clearly amiss here.
“Arrests Now Involve People with Expired Visas but Another Form of Legal Status Pending”
Finally, the Journal highlights the fact that these most recent ICE arrests at airports “involve people with expired visas but another form of legal status pending, such as a green card or asylum application”, as opposed to “earlier cases”, which “primarily involved ICE pursuing immigrants with final deportation orders”.
Even assuming those facts are true, they don’t — or shouldn’t — make any difference.
As Hart Celler recently explained in analyzing the case of Fatima Ameaka, a Cameroonian national and alleged visa overstay arrested at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) on July 28, pending applications for potential immigration relief don’t place aliens outside the ambit of immigration enforcement.
If simply filing immigration applications gave foreign nationals immunity to ICE enforcement, every removable alien would seek immigration benefits to extend his or her unlawful status and evade detention indefinitely.
It’s also important to remember that two aliens highlighted in the 9/11 Commission’s report — Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two CIA employees and wounded three others outside the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters, and Ramzi Yousef, who planned the first, 1993, World Trade Center (WTC) bombing, killing six and wounding more than 1,000 others — had pending asylum applications when they carried out their attacks.
Another alien terrorist involved in the first WTC attack, Mohammed Salameh, and Saudi national Satam al Suqami, who participated in the 9/11 attacks, were nonimmigrant visa overstays, while a different alien WTC bomber, Eyad Ismoil, and 9/11 hijacker Saudi national Hani Hanjour, had violated the terms of their nonimmigrant student visas when they acted.
All were aliens, none was under a final order of removal, and none should have been allowed anywhere near a U.S. airport, let alone on a flight.
Passions Running High
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, passions on both sides of the political aisle have been running high over immigration enforcement, mostly driven by popular misunderstandings about how the law works and what ICE does and is required to do.
Ignore the hype and realize that even if ICE is expanding immigration arrests at airports, its activities are still extremely limited.
As travelers, we expect airlines and their employees to get us to our destinations on time while looking out for our safety and comfort. Those expectations, however, do not give carriers, crew, or “gate agents” license to impede federal law enforcement. In this, as in many other situations involving ICE, a little education would go a long way.