Is ICE at SFO? Here’s What We Know About Videos of Woman Being Forcefully Detained

While Bay Area officials criticized the actions of plainclothes immigration officers seen forcefully handling a woman at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday night, they said there does not seem to be a wider federal operation at SFO.

In footage that spread quickly on social media, men wearing dark clothing without visible badges or agency markings are seen pulling a visibly distraught woman from a bench in an airport terminal around 10 p.m. Sunday.

One of the men pries her fingers from the bench while the other pushes her into a wheelchair. Eyewitnesses can be heard asking the agents to show their badges and provide badge numbers. Nearby, a girl who appears to be about 10 years old is heard crying.

One person in the background of the video said, “This is illegal.”

“For ICE agents to be at SFO, deporting someone with a child and engaging in pretty violent behavior towards that person, it is so disgusting and unacceptable. We want ICE to get the hell out,” state Sen. Scott Wiener said Monday, speaking to reporters outside of SFO’s international terminal.

According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, the woman and her daughter were arrested at the airport and were being “escorted to the international terminal for processing” when the woman tried to flee. The family had a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2019, according to the DHS spokesperson.

SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel said in a statement that the agents were “transporting two individuals on an outbound flight when this incident occurred,” though DHS did not clarify if the woman had been arrested prior to arriving at the airport.

Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a statement on social media that he found the incident upsetting but believes it was an isolated event.

“We have no reason to believe there is broader federal immigration enforcement at SFO,” he wrote.

The detention comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are deployed to more than a dozen U.S. airports, a move that the Trump administration said is meant to supplement security staffing during a partial government shutdown that has led to long waits for air travelers across the country.

Transportation Security Administration employees have been working without pay since DHS funding lapsed in February, and now many are calling out sick or resigning, according to the agency. SFO has privately contracted security screeners, who are not affected by the lapse in federal funding.

Videos of the SFO incident show a line of San Francisco police officers standing between a crowd of onlookers and the federal authorities detaining the woman. The San Francisco Police Department said its officers responded to the scene around 10 p.m. after receiving a 911 call related to the incident, but that they were not involved in the woman’s detention.

SFPD spokesperson Robert Rueca said in a statement that the officers determined that the incident involved federal law enforcement agents and “remained at the scene to maintain public safety.”

The San Francisco Rapid Response Network, which verifies community alerts about possible ICE sightings, was still trying to determine details midday Monday.

Milli Atkinson, who directs the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco, said travelers who are concerned about ICE should refer to the American Civil Liberties Union’s “Know Your Rights in Airports” guidelines.

“The video of a mother being aggressively detained by ICE agents in front of her daughter at the San Francisco International Airport is yet another heartbreaking example of how Trump’s inhumane immigration enforcement is terrorizing communities across America,” Bay Area Rep. Kevin Mullin and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement. “After killing people in our streets and detaining U.S. citizens, ICE has lost all credibility and trust with the public. We demand immediate answers as to the mother’s and her child’s condition and the grounds for their detainment.”

KQED’s Tyche Hendricks and Joseph Geha contributed to this report.