Answers needed from CLE Airport
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will begin assisting Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents with “managing passenger lines, monitoring exits and checking identification,” according to the federal government, as reported by the Akron Beacon Journal (behind paywall).
Yet Cleveland Hopkins communications manager Michele Dynia said: “These personnel are supporting TSA operations in a non-screening role, including assisting with passenger flow and divesting. They are not conducting identification checks or screening passengers.”
Which is it? Said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance:
ICE has no business in airports. These are agents who use racial profiling and excessive force in their daily duties — enforcing civil laws. They arrest people with legal work permits and pending immigration cases every single day. This administration is trying to cancel legal status programs to make more people deportable. ICE has a quota for arrests. They don’t care if the person is actually deportable, they just want to detain them and make it impossible for people to get bond or release, even when mistakes are made.
It seems like the Airport Authority and federal government have their wires crossed. Will ICE be enforcing immigration laws at Hopkins? Will they be checking IDs, or won’t they? Will they be carrying guns? The TSA is supposed to look at your ID to see if you can fly; they don’t have an immigration enforcement role and they don’t carry guns. In the field, ICE has applied its authority overly broadly, and made many mistakes, includingfatalones. They detained more than 170 U.S. citizens in just the first nine months of the second Trump administration.
Bringing ICE to Cleveland Hopkins Airport is a recipe for disaster and an attempt by the Trump administration to bully lawmakers into giving more taxpayer money to the already-bloated ICE.
OIA encourages anyone who has problems at the CLE Hopkins Airport to contact the Ohio Immigrant Hotline (419-777-HELP/4357 or hotline@ohioimmigrant.org
