Key Background
ICE is under pressure to deliver on President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda with a goal of around 3,000 arrests a day. Recent arrests at airports reflect an expansion of the arrangement between the TSA and ICE, which are both under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. Plain-clothes ICE agents are increasingly targeting foreign travelers who have overstayed U.S. visas, confronting them at check-in counters and arrival gates, with the New York Times noting “some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.” Some immigration attorneys told CNN that clients who had entered the U.S. legally and were in the asylum process were among those detained. As Forbes reported in April, TSA provided ICE with tens of thousands of traveler records—far more than was previously known—since Trump returned to the presidency. The agreement appears to contradict acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill’s sworn congressional testimony in January that TSA does not “send the information to ICE; we help ICE check against [TSA] information.” Forbes reached out to TSA for clarification on how travelers’ personal information is shared, managed and safeguarded but did not receive a response.
Read more Trump Shares Dig At Amy Coney Barrett After Big Losses Before Conservative Supreme Court
Crucial Quote
“If the new expectation is that if you have a pending [asylum] application, you can’t travel … that would be very, very new,” Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told CNN.
ForbesDHS Won’t Pull Customs Officers From Newark Airport—But Keeps Plan For Other Blue CitiesBy Suzanne Rowan Kelleher
How Many Visitors Overstay Their U.S. Visas Each Year?
For fiscal year 2024, 1% of non-immigrant visitors overstayed their visas, representing 482,954 people. While the CPB is yet to release data for last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that non-immigrant overstays were flat in fiscal year 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term, with 260,000 “people who entered legally in a temporary status but overstayed their term of residency.” DHS sent Forbes a statement virtually identical to one shared in April, blaming former President Joe Biden for allowing “aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country” and insisting the Trump 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.”
Read more Dow Posts Its Worst Day Of The Year After Federal Reserve Maintains Interest Rates
Tangent
Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he had a “plan to initiate” the removal of customs screening from international airports in the U.S. serving Democratic-led sanctuary cities—a proposal that has yet to be enacted after being met with widespread opposition from the travel industry.
Further Reading
DHS Won’t Pull Customs Officers From Newark Airport—But Keeps Plan For Other Blue Cities (Forbes)
Read more FIFA Investigating Argentina Over Controversial Falklands Banner
TSA Has Been Tipping Off ICE Since Trump Returned To White House (Forbes)