Transportation Security Administration
The Transportation Security Administration screens passengers and baggage and secures U.S. transportation systems, within the Department of Homeland Security. All of its entries fall in 2026 and record the sharing of passenger screening data with other agencies and the accuracy of statements made about those practices to Congress.
2026 Events (3)
ICE arrested Johns Hopkins researcher at BWI, blocked counsel access, transferred her 1,000 miles to Louisiana
On July 28, 2026, ICE agents arrested Fatima Ameaka, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health senior analyst and former Fulbright scholar, at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport as she boarded a domestic flight, citing a civil visa-overstay violation with no criminal charge. Neither her family nor her attorney could reach her for days as ICE moved her roughly 1,000 miles to a Louisiana detention facility, canceling a scheduled attorney video interview in the process. Ameaka held a work authorization permit valid until 2029 and had a pending asylum application at the time of her arrest.
TSA shared passenger screening data with ICE to target and detain asylum-seeking mother at San Francisco airport
On March 23, 2026, Transportation Security Administration agents at San Francisco International Airport shared passenger screening data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alerting ICE that Guatemalan mother Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and her young daughter would be boarding a flight, resulting in Lopez-Jimenez's public detention in Terminal 3 as bystanders recorded the arrest. TSA had been sharing passenger information with immigration officials for roughly a year under a program flagging individuals subject to deportation orders, first reported by the New York Times in December 2025 but largely unnoticed until the SFO incident.
TSA Acting Administrator McNeill falsely told Congress TSA does not send passenger data to ICE; FOIA-obtained agreement showed it does
On January 21, 2026, Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security that TSA does not send passenger data to ICE, saying the agency only "helps ICE check against information." A Memorandum of Agreement between TSA and ICE, signed in May 2025 and disclosed by American Oversight through a FOIA lawsuit on July 28, 2026, states that TSA "intends to share specified data elements with ICE" and sets procedures for ICE to retain that information.