How many total arrests nationwide have ICE attributed to TSA passenger-list matches since March 2025?
Executive summary
The news organizations that broke the story report that the Transportation Security Administration began sharing full passenger lists with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March 2025, enabling ICE to match travelers against removal databases and arrest flagged individuals at airports, but they also state that it is not known how many arrests nationwide resulted from those TSA-to-ICE matches [1] [2] [3]. A former ICE official told reporters that roughly 75% of flagged names in one region produced arrests, but that figure is regional, unverified as a national rate, and cannot be extrapolated to a nationwide arrest total without ICE or DHS confirmation [1] [4].
1. What the reporting actually documents about the program
Investigative reporting by multiple outlets describes a program beginning in March 2025 in which TSA routinely sends airline passenger manifests to ICE several times a week so ICE can cross‑check travelers against its deportation databases and dispatch agents to airports to detain matched individuals [3] [5] [6]. Those accounts include at least one high‑profile example — the arrest and rapid deportation of college student Any Lucía López Belloza at Boston Logan Airport in November 2025 — which documents that the information sharing was used operationally to effect arrests [1] [7].
2. What the government has officially said — and not said — about totals
Publicly available reporting shows that neither TSA nor ICE released a national tally of arrests attributable to passenger‑list matches at the time these articles were published; multiple outlets explicitly note that the total number of arrests resulting from the collaboration is unknown [1] [2]. DHS statements cited broader enforcement metrics — for example, press remarks about deportations and voluntary departures — but those totals are not tied to the TSA passenger‑list matching program and do not provide a breakdown that would identify how many arrests stem directly from TSA data sharing [3].
3. The “75%” figure: a regional glimpse, not a national accounting
Reporting repeatedly cites a former ICE official who said that in that official’s region about 75% of instances flagged through the TSA list resulted in arrests; outlets used this figure to indicate the program’s operational yield in at least one area [1] [4]. That figure, however, is explicitly described as regional anecdote in the reporting and “could not be independently verified from the material provided,” so it cannot serve as a reliable national multiplier without ICE providing nationwide match‑to‑arrest data [3] [4].
4. Why a reliable nationwide arrest number is not present in the reporting
The available articles show two limiting realities: first, the program’s outputs are not being publicly quantified in a way that ties specific arrests to TSA‑originated matches; and second, the datasets DHS publishes (high‑level deportation numbers) are not disaggregated to indicate the operational source of each arrest (e.g., road patrols, workplace raids, or airport matches) [1] [3]. Reporters repeatedly emphasize the absence of an attributable national count in their documents and note that the agencies involved have not supplied the requested granular figures [2] [6].
5. Known documented arrests and the evidentiary limits
Beyond the López Belloza case, the reviews and articles describe that ICE has been conducting airport arrests tied to the TSA lists in multiple jurisdictions and that advocacy groups and local reporting have flagged additional arrests and detentions, but those pieces stop short of assembling a comprehensive national list or offering an agency‑certified total [7] [8]. Some outlets and advocacy groups have compiled anecdotal incidents, but the reporting makes clear such compilations are not a substitute for an ICE‑provided national tally and are prone to regional reporting bias [6] [9].
6. Bottom line: the direct answer to the question
As of the reporting provided, ICE has not attributed or publicly reported a nationwide total number of arrests that directly result from TSA passenger‑list matches since March 2025; major news accounts explicitly say it is unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration [1] [2]. Independent reporting offers regional snapshots and individual cases and cites a 75% regional arrest rate from a former official, but there is no verified national arrest count in the material reviewed [4] [3].