Bay Area Immigrant Advocates Warn Noncitizens to Avoid Air Travel After ICE Arrests
More than a dozen people have been detained at Bay Area airports since June 27, according to local rapid response networks, which monitor and respond to federal enforcement operations.
Following a surge in arrests in recent weeks, immigrants’ rights advocates are urging people without U.S. citizenship to avoid air travel.
“We are recommending that during this period of time, during this administration … if you don’t have an urgent matter to travel for, even domestically, that you think about it to determine whether the risks are worth it,” said Jazmin Preciado, an attorney with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland.
On June 27, a man from Argentina, who entered the United States with his wife on a visa in 2020, was detained at Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, where he planned to depart for Texas.
According to Preciado, the couple had overstayed their visas during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained in the country. But the man and his wife, along with their child, who was born in the U.S., planned to return to Argentina in October, Preciado said.
“The individual had taken a domestic flight maybe about three months ago, and it was without incident, so he figured, ‘I can take one more flight right before we take off permanently,’” Preciado said. “And it was different.”
She said the man spent multiple days in a detention facility before Alameda County’s Rapid Response Network was able to connect him with legal representation and secure a court order to release him from custody.
In the last month, advocates have tracked similar arrests across the Bay Area. On July 22, video footage of San Francisco resident Iryna Gorb being forcibly detained at San Francisco International Airport while traveling circulated online, and an Oakland woman was detained at the Denver International Airport on July 20.
According to a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network, the county’s coalition has recorded 10 arrests of residents traveling through SFO and San José Mineta International airports since July 1. Six were arrested at SFO, while four were at SJC.
San Francisco and Alameda County Rapid Response Networks said they weren’t able to provide a full account of arrests at airports for their counties’ residents, but both said the practice is becoming more regular.
“We’ve been seeing an uptick in reports, not just from the Bay Area, but from around the country, of similar arrests,” Preciado said. “It’s definitely been a lot more consistently that we’ve heard of this happening.”
Arrests of domestic travellers have become more common in the last year, as the Trump administration has significantly expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and budget over the last year and a half.
The first known airport arrest of a Santa Clara County resident at the San José Airport was in November, according to the county’s rapid response network spokesperson. Since then, the network has recorded a few arrests each month. In March, a mother and daughter who lived in Contra Costa County were detained at SFO, drawing broad condemnation for the arrests in a sanctuary city.
The March detention sparked controversy again after New York Times reporting found that the Transportation Security Agency tipped off immigration officials that the pair would be travelling after their names showed up on a flight’s passenger list.
The TSA has said that information sharing is routine and legal because the agency is a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
“It is not new policy to share information between the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security,” TSA’s acting director Ha Nguyen McNeill said during a Congressional hearing in January.
“We are supporting the mission of our colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security, and that includes enforcement of immigration laws,” she said.
Still, Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the San Francisco Bar Association, said the uptick in arrests indicates that TSA may be sharing passenger information more frequently than in the past.
“What we’re seeing now is ICE showing up at airports because they have information about travelers, they have ID information,” she said. “It just appears that TSA is now cooperating with ICE at a level that we haven’t seen before.”
A spokesperson for the Santa Clara rapid response network said the coalition has seen airport arrests of people who have overstayed tourist visas, asylum seekers with open cases and permanent residents who may have had prior interaction with law enforcement that might show up on their record.
If people without legal status choose to travel, Preciado and other advocates suggest people consult an attorney who can provide a “full understanding of what risks they’re going to be undertaking.”
“Now is not a safe time to be traveling through airports unless you’ve spoken to an attorney and you assess what risk there is,” Atkinson told KQED Friday.