TSA giving airline passenger data to ICE: NYT

The Transportation Security Administration is giving U.S. immigration officials the names of every airline traveler as part of the Trump administration’s widespread deportation program, The New York Times reported Friday.

TSA, several times per week, gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement a list of travelers expected to be passing through airports, the Times reported.

“ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people,” the newspaper said.

ICE and TSA are both divisions of the Homeland Security Department.

A Homeland Security spokesperson, in a statement to CNBC, said of the Times report, “This is nothing new.”

“Back in February, Secretary [Kristi] Noem reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country and do so without identification,” the spokesperson said. “Under President Trump, TSA and DHS will no longer tolerate this. This 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.”

The Times said that it is not known how many people have been arrested as a result of TSA’s information sharing.

But the newspaper said it had obtained documents that indicate the program led to the Nov. 20 arrest at Boston’s Logan Airport of a college student, Any Lucía López Belloza, who was deported to Honduras two days later. López had been on her way to visit her family in Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Times previously reported that López was brought to the United States from Honduras at age 7, and that her family said neither they nor she knew she was subject to a deportation order.