TSA Tip Led To Woman’s Arrest In Front Of Her Young Daughter By ICE At San Francisco Airport
As we previously reported, the Trump administration has begun deploying ICE agents to U.S. airports, allegedly, to assist the understaffed Transportation Security Administration, where employees have been working without pay due to a partial government shutdown. ICE has been deployed to airports to help reduce wait times, not necessarily to conduct immigration enforcement operations, although White House officials, including President Donald Trump himself, have signaled agents will be keeping an eye out for undocumented immigrants as well.
At San Francisco International Airport, a woman was arrested while traveling with her 9-year-old daughter, and it was TSA officials who reportedly tipped ICE off to make the arrest.
While reports vary on whether ICE’s presence at airports has helped reduce wait times, at least one immigration arrest was made the day before the deployment even began.
According to the New York Times, Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter were approached by an ICE agent in plain clothes on Sunday night while they were heading to their gate to visit a relative in Miami. Minutes later, she was on her knees, crying, as two agents were handcuffing her in front of her child.
According to the Associated Press, San Francisco International Airport is not among airports where ICE officers are expected to be deployed because the airport uses private contractors to screen passengers, so it is not affected by the lapse in TSA funding.
“We believe this is an isolated incident and have no reason to suspect broader enforcement action at SFO,” airport spokesman Doug Yakel said in a statement.
So, why were they there for Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter?
Well, the Times reported that it obtained federal documents detailing how the TSA is sharing information with ICE on the names and birth dates of travelers believed to have been ordered out of the U.S. by a judge.
From the Times:
Ms. Lopez-Jimenez, 41, a native of Guatemala, and her daughter, Wendy Godinez-Lopez, were flagged by T.S.A. officials on Friday when they showed up on a passenger list for a Sunday flight from San Francisco to Miami. The agency then tipped off Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the documents.
Ms. Lopez-Jimenez and her daughter were living in Contra Costa County, Calif., on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the congressman for that region, John Garamendi. She had no criminal history, though she entered the country illegally.
Documents also show that Lopez-Jimenez first came under the radar of the federal government in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when Border Patrol agents spotted her and her daughter, who was a toddler at the time, 14 miles from the point of entry at San Luis, Arizona. Agents determined then that she and her daughter were born in Guatemala and were in the U.S. while undocumented. They reportedly took her to a facility to photograph her, take her fingerprints, and obtain other information about her, then she was given a notice to appear in court for removal proceedings and released. In May 2019, a judge ordered her removal after she allegedly showed up to some court dates but missed others.
Again, the Trump administration had already made it clear ICE agents would be conducting immigration enforcement when necessary, which, for this administration, is always.
“We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time. So it’s not going to change,” ICE director Tom Homan told CNN.
The day before Lopez-Jimenez’ arrest, Trump said in a Truth Social post that ICE agents would arrest undocumented immigrants at airports, with “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia,” the president’s new favorite target for all things racist, xenophobic and otherwise inflammatory. Now, there’s even speculation that the deployment of ICE agents to airports is simply a “test run” for deploying them to polling places during the midterm elections, which Trump ally Steve Bannon recently advocated for.
ICE’s presence at airports already has people concerned, with many opting not to travel until they’re gone, and the airports return to a place of normalcy, whenever that will be.
Or whatever normalcy even looks like under this administration. It has been a MAGA-fied mess, and that doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.
SEE ALSO:
Trump Sends ICE To US Airports To Help TSA And Target Immigrants, Of Course