How many people have been arrested at U.S. airports since the TSA–ICE data sharing began, and where can aggregated counts be found?
Executive summary
There is no published, aggregated count of how many people have been arrested at U.S. airports specifically because of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) practice of sharing passenger manifests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); news reporting and federal spokespeople confirm the program and link it to individual high-profile detentions but say DHS/ICE have not disclosed a total number [1] [2] [3]. The closest public dataportal that offers ICE arrest totals is ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) statistics page, but it does not break out arrests attributable to TSA data-sharing or airport gate arrests specifically [4].
1. What the reporting actually establishes: program exists, but totals are opaque
Multiple news outlets reported that beginning in March 2025 TSA began sending passenger lists—often multiple times per week—to ICE so the agency can cross-check travelers against its removal databases and deploy agents to make arrests at airports, and those reports connected the practice to a handful of named detentions such as the arrest and deportation of Any Lucía López Belloza [1] [5] [6]. At the same time, the New York Times and other outlets explicitly noted that it is unclear how many arrests have resulted from the practice and that Homeland Security officials have not publicly disclosed a cumulative figure [1] [2] [3]. Local reporting and airport officials likewise say they have seen no public accounting from TSA or ICE of airport arrests tied to the data-sharing [7] [8].
2. What federal data sources do and do not provide
ICE publishes Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics—dashboards and downloadable data on arrests, removals, detention, and alternatives—which are the authoritative, public-facing aggregate numbers for ICE enforcement activity broadly, but ICE’s ERO dashboards do not identify which arrests took place at airports or which resulted from TSA-provided passenger lists, nor do they label actions as “TSA-assisted” in the materials available on the site [4]. DHS spokespeople and reporting cited by outlets have pointed to larger enforcement tallies when making policy claims, but those larger counts (for example, administration statements about deportations or departures) are not tied in the public record to the TSA–ICE manifest matches and therefore cannot be used to quantify airport arrests caused by the data-sharing program [9].
3. Conflicting claims and unverifiable figures in coverage
Some former officials quoted in reporting offered striking efficiency figures—one former ICE official reportedly said roughly 75% of names flagged through the TSA lists led to arrests—but outlets and fact-checkers note that this claim could not be independently verified from available material [9]. Other pieces emphasize the program’s concrete consequences through case studies and interviews while acknowledging the absence of a systematic, agency-published count [6] [7]. DHS and TSA defenders frame the practice as routine or as restoring enforcement priorities, which constitutes a policy justification rather than a published arrest tally [10] [9].
4. Direct answer and where to look for aggregated counts
Direct answer: no official, aggregated public count exists in the reporting provided; DHS and ICE have not released a compiled number of airport arrests attributable to TSA’s passenger-list sharing, and reporters repeatedly state the total is “unclear” or “not known” [1] [2] [3]. For anyone seeking the most relevant official aggregates available today, start with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics dashboards and data download pages—which publish overall arrest and removal totals but do not disaggregate TSA-originated or airport-specific arrests—and monitor DHS/ICE press releases or Congressional oversight reports for any future, program-specific disclosure [4]. Reporting and local coverage remain the primary source of incident-level examples until the agencies publish a program-level tally [7] [6].