"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders."
13 Dec 2025 — 1 min read
[Hamed Aleaziz in the New York Times]
The identity of every single domestic air traveler has been sent to ICE since March of this year:
“The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.
Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration…
"The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders."
13 Dec 2025 — 1 min read
[Hamed Aleaziz in the New York Times]
The identity of every single domestic air traveler has been sent to ICE since March of this year:
“The Trump administration is providing the names of all air travelers to immigration officials, substantially expanding its use of data sharing to expel people under deportation orders.
Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. 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.”
In effect, this is an internal citizenship checkpoint, even if it’s one that’s happening quietly behind the scenes. Because the US doesn’t have much interstate transit infrastructure outside of air travel — Amtrak exists, but is expensive and inconvenient outside of the Northeast Corridor — this amounts to checking in on every traveler who doesn’t drive. And drivers, in turn, are covered by ICE’s use of Flock’s nationwide license plate cameras.
TSA, which was introduced during the frenzy after the attacks on September 11, 2001, is a security function, not an immigration enforcer. This quietly collapses the distinction between administrative security screening and law enforcement. As a country, we consented to personal identity information being used to keep us safe; this is a new use that arguably has nothing to do with safety. These sorts of surveillance ratchets are rarely rolled back. The creation of TSA itself was considered (including by me) to be an overtly oppressive measure at the time, and we’ve lived with it ever since. It’s likely that we’ll need to live with this too.
All surveillance creates a chilling effect. I know that when ICE has been seen in some neighborhoods, attendance at local schools has dropped. Knowing that internal travel is being monitored will have the same effect, essentially locking some immigrants into their local areas. This is, I’m sure, part of the point.
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