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).
Read to the end for Know Your Rights resources.
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.
We have since found out that yes, they are carrying guns. And although they aren’t doing ID checks as of March 26, TSA agent and AFGE Local 615 President Aaron Bankston said: “Eventually they will be doing ID checks.”
Concern about using ICE at airports has been widespread. Many people see this as intimidation and a precursor to deploying ICE at the polls. “This show is not about national security or making airports run more efficiently. ICE is doing nothing at the airports. It is pure, taxpayer-funded political theater designed to project an aura of intimidation into every aspect of American life,” wrote one anonymous Plain Dealer reader.
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.
Know Your Rights
National Police Accountability Project
National Immigration Law Center
Quick Travel Safety Tips in English and Spanish
Longer Explanation of Our Rights at Airports and Making a Travel Plan in English, Spanish, Haitian Kreyol
Other Guides
