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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.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
San Francisco, California

Abuses documented

Actors

On March 23, 2026, Transportation Security Administration agents at San Francisco International Airport used passenger screening data to tip off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, a 41-year-old Guatemalan mother subject to a final deportation order, and her nine-year-old daughter would be boarding a flight. ICE agents were waiting in Terminal 3; they detained Lopez-Jimenez publicly as a crowd gathered and recorded the arrest, with bystanders shouting at agents. Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter were subsequently flown to Texas and returned to Guatemala, where staffers for Representative John Garamendi confirmed the pair were safe with extended family.

The detention exposed a year-old program in which TSA shares flight-passenger information with immigration officials to flag individuals on deportation lists, a use of airport-security screening data that falls outside TSA's core security mandate. The New York Times had reported on the program's existence in December 2025, but it had drawn little attention until the public confrontation at SFO. Government documents obtained by the Times showed that TSA learned of the pair's flight two days in advance and alerted ICE; Lopez-Jimenez's criminal record was limited to crossing the U.S. border illegally in 2018, and she had been ordered deported the following year.

Updates

2026-03-30 — Senators Schiff and Padilla demanded disclosure of TSA-ICE program scope [1]

Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla sent formal inquiry letters to the heads of TSA, ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security, describing the TSA-ICE collaboration as "alarming" and demanding disclosure of how the information-sharing works, how many people have been detained or deported through it, and which airports are involved. The White House defended the arrest. Immigration attorneys reported that the SFO detention was prompting immigrants with pending asylum applications and no criminal history to cancel domestic travel plans out of fear that TSA screening could lead to their arrest.

2026-04-07 — Reuters reported TSA shared 31,000 tips with ICE; 800+ arrests resulted [2]

A Reuters exclusive, sourced to government documents, reported that TSA shared approximately 31,000 traveler tips with ICE from January 2025 through February 2026, resulting in more than 800 arrests — establishing the full scale of the program that the March 23 SFO detention had made visible.

Why we recorded this

TSA's screening mandate rests on statutory authorization to collect passenger data for aviation security, not immigration enforcement. When that data is rerouted to ICE to facilitate deportation arrests at airports, it extends immigration policing into domestic air travel using infrastructure passengers have no practical ability to avoid and no expectation serves immigration enforcement. Repurposing security-screening data outside its statutory collection purpose is a civil-liberties concern this archive tracks — particularly when carried out without public transparency, as this program operated for roughly a year before a public arrest made it visible.

Sources

  1. Senators seek answers from Trump administration about airport immigration arrests — The Boston Globe primary accessed July 26, 2026
  2. Exclusive-ICE arrested more than 800 people after tips from US airport security agency — Reuters primary accessed July 27, 2026

See also