The sister agencies shared information during the process.
By Catholics for Catholics
From the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency through February 2026, over 800 people were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after tips were shared by federal airport security officials
The figure is far above what was previously publicly known, according to a Reuters report.
According to Newsmax, the leads proceeded from the Transportation Security Administration, which supplied ICE with records on more than 31,000 travelers for possible immigration enforcement, the data showed.
Still, Reuters could not ascertain how many arrests happened inside airports, although the TSA tips would mostly be useful in revealing when a person would be traveling.
Both being a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE and TSA have historically shared information linked to national security threats. However, as part of the Trump-led mass deportation operations, they started to focus on routine immigration arrests since last year.
TSA’s Secure Flight Program, which was formed in 2007 to permit the agency to review passenger information for people who may be on U.S. government watchlists, gathered 31,000 traveler records.
Meant as a counter-terrorism measure, the program was not created to track down immigration offenders, according to the regulation outlining its purpose.
Immigration and U.S. airports have been at the crux of a funding fight between the Democrats and the GOP since mid-February, when the Democrats declined to support additional monies for the Republican president’s immigration crackdown without reforms to tone down hard-hitting procedures.
The impasse gridlocked the passage of a bill to fund DHS, which caused TSA security officers to miss at least two full paychecks. After some unpaid TSA officers began calling in sick, Trump deployed ICE officers to more than a dozen airports in March to aid security efforts.
Nevertheless, Democrats have blasted the deployment and called on the Trump administration to remove them. A group of more than 40 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives wrote in a letter to Markwayne Mullin, the recently installed Homeland Security Secretary last week that ICE officers “will cause confusion and fear” if permitted to remain in airports.
Save and Share This Catholic Patriotic Minute!
