TSA Was Built to Stop Terrorists. Now It Helps ICE Deport College Students.

The Agency Shares Every Passenger Name

The Transportation Security Administration is handing over the names of every air traveler to Immigration and Customs Enforcement multiple times per week.

The program, revealed by the New York Times on December 12, 2025, allows ICE to match passenger lists against deportation databases and send agents to arrest people at airport gates.

It marks a dramatic shift for an agency created to stop terrorism, not enforce immigration law.

The arrangement has already led to at least one high-profile deportation, and critics say it turns routine air travel into a surveillance operation.

TSA Was Born From September 11

The TSA was established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001.

The agency was created with the mission to protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure the freedom of movement for people and commerce.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia on September 11, 2001, and the attacks resulted in the creation of the TSA to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Immigration Was Never Part of the Job

TSA collects passenger names, travel dates, itineraries, and other sensitive information for the specific purpose of screening passengers for aviation security threats.

The TSA previously did not get involved in domestic criminal or immigration matters, according to one former agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Among the concerns has been that enforcement activities at airports could distract from airport security and contribute to longer passenger wait times.

College Student Arrested at Logan Airport

Any Lucía López Belloza, a 19-year-old freshman at Babson College studying business, was arrested by federal immigration officials moments before getting on her flight on November 20.

She was flying out of Boston’s Logan International Airport to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving but was stopped by ICE agents.

She was told there was a problem with her boarding pass, and on her way to customer service she was surrounded, placed in handcuffs, and dragged out of the airport, according to her attorney.

Deported to Honduras Despite Court Order

In roughly 48 hours after her arrest, López Belloza was sent to Texas and then Honduras, a country she had not seen since she was seven years old.

She was deported despite a court order prohibiting the government from moving her out of Massachusetts or the United States, according to her attorney.

Detention felt like torture, she later said, and after a few hours of waiting, it hit her that she was getting deported.

Airlines Were Already Selling Your Data

The Airlines Reporting Corporation acts as an intermediary between travel agencies and airlines, and its dataset includes information on 54 percent of all flights taken globally.

The data includes full flight itineraries, passenger name records, and financial details, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain for past and future flights.

ARC is jointly owned by nine major airlines including Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Air Canada, Lufthansa, and Air France.

CBP Asked Airlines to Hide the Source

Documents obtained by journalists showed that agencies including CBP, ICE, and the IRS used ARC’s data without obtaining warrants or going through a court process.

One contract reportedly even discouraged CBP from disclosing that ARC was the source of the data, and none of this was disclosed in any meaningful way to passengers.

A separate document from the Department of Homeland Security shows the agency has over a billion such records spanning 39 months of past and future travel.

Nine Federal Agencies Bought Access

Federal agencies listed in procurement records that purchased ARC data include the Secret Service, SEC, DEA, TSA, and even the Air Force.

The FBI, Customs and Border Protection, ATF, State Department, and ICE also purchased access to the system.

Because the data was sold commercially rather than obtained through legal process, agencies bypassed Fourth Amendment warrant requirements.

Congress Pushed Airlines to Stop Selling

When members of Congress raised concerns and called on airlines to end these contracts, ARC indicated it would discontinue the data-sharing program by the end of 2025.

ARC’s chief executive wrote that the Travel Intelligence Program is no longer aligned with ARC’s core goals of serving the travel industry and stated that the product will be sunset by the end of 2025.

But by then, ICE had already found another source for the same information.

TSA Data Sharing Bypasses Privacy Rules

Under normal circumstances, when one federal agency shares millions of sensitive records with another agency, the Privacy Act of 1974 requires public disclosure detailing what information is being shared, how it will be used, and what protections govern the data.

However, because Congress merged both ICE and TSA into the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, they are treated as a single agency under the Privacy Act.

ICE’s deal with TSA circumvents congressional accountability.

75 Percent of Tips Lead to Arrests

A former ICE official stated that in his region, 75 percent of the cases flagged by the airport program ended in detentions.

The Pacific Enforcement Response Center, an ICE office in California, sends tips to immigration officers across the country.

Documents show the California office flagged López Belloza’s flight information to ICE officers in Boston as part of a collaboration with the TSA to send actionable leads regarding aliens with final orders of removal who appear to have an impending flight scheduled.

DHS Says Fly Only If You Are Leaving

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reversed a Biden-era policy that had allowed some migrants to use the CBP One app to board flights.

A DHS spokesperson said the administration is working to ensure that aliens in the country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of the country to self-deport.

With this arrangement, ICE now has access to the flight information of every traveler who flies through an American airport. The agency built to protect Americans from terrorism now tracks where all of them go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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• TSA Ends Free Passes for Travelers Without REAL ID—And the Fee Isn’t Cheap
• Trump Spent $200 Million on a Self-Deportation App That Costs $7,500 Per Person
• TSA’s Real ID Fee Went From $18 to $45 in Less Than Two Weeks