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 in Washington, D.C. that the Transportation Security Administration does not send passenger data to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, telling lawmakers "we don't send the information to ICE; we help ICE check against information." The testimony came amid scrutiny of a TSA-ICE data-sharing program first reported by the New York Times in December 2025 and later shown by Reuters to have generated tips on more than 31,000 travelers, leading to more than 800 immigration arrests.

On July 28, 2026, the watchdog group American Oversight released a previously undisclosed Memorandum of Agreement between TSA and ICE, obtained through a FOIA lawsuit, that had been signed in May 2025 - four months before McNeill's testimony. The MOA cites the Secure Flight Final Rule as its legal basis and states that TSA "intends to share specified data elements with ICE," while ICE stores the information it receives in its own repository, a framework at odds with McNeill's description of a one-way check rather than a data transfer. Neither TSA nor ICE has reconciled McNeill's sworn account with the MOA's terms.

Updates

2026-01-22 — American Oversight sued TSA and ICE over withheld data-sharing records [5]

One day after McNeill's testimony, American Oversight filed a FOIA lawsuit against TSA and ICE seeking the memoranda and contracts governing their data-sharing partnership, after both agencies failed to respond to public-records requests and an administrative appeal; the suit's discovery process ultimately surfaced the May 2025 Memorandum of Agreement whose July 2026 disclosure grounds this entry.

2026-07-17 — TSA nominee Cummins declined to detail ICE data-sharing scope [4]

During his July 17, 2026 confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, TSA Administrator nominee David Cummins declined to detail what information TSA shares with ICE. Sen. Gary Peters said his staff's requests for a briefing on the program's scope had gone unanswered; Cummins responded that he did not know the specifics of what had been asked but would "try to provide as much as we can within our bounds."