Federal immigration authorities targeting airports for arrests
In an effort to ramp up deportations, federal immigration authorities have a new tactic: arresting people who overstay their visas in airports, according to an immigration memo 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, according to a source.
There have been at least 27 arrests in airports using this tactic, according to a document obtained by ABC News. The document doesn't state over what period of time the arrests took place.
Those being detained in some cases do not have criminal records and have valid work authorization or parole documents, according to one immigration attorney that spoke with ABC News.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said: "DHS reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country," according to a DHS spokesperson. "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."
"Airports are becoming a new enforcement zone for people who have been living in the U.S. lawfully, holding valid work permits, complying with immigration law, but still in pending status awaiting their green cards," she said. "These individuals are technically in a legal gray area, since a pending application does not carry the same protection as an approved one. ICE is exploiting that gray area as an opportunity to arrest and detain them."
On Tuesday, a watchdog group released the memorandum of agreement between the Transportation Security Administration and ICE, which allows for TSA to share information with immigration authorities.
ABC News has previously reported on the agreement, but for the first time American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog, which obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act request, made the document public.
The agreement establishes guidelines for the sharing and storing of data and cites the Secure Flight Final Rule, which governs passenger information, as the basis for the agreement.
"The scope of this Agreement is limited to the exchange of agreed-upon data between the Parties to enhance national security, transportation security, law enforcement, and immigration and border management," according to the 16-page agreement.
In March, amid a record shutdown of DHS due to a congressional funding impasse, the Trump administration sent ICE agents to more than a dozen airports across the country to fill TSA staffing gaps.
