TL;DR: For the first time in U.S. history, routine domestic air travel is being used for mass, suspicionless screening tied to civil immigration enforcement, setting a dangerous new surveillance precedent.
What’s happening with TSA quietly sharing every domestic passenger’s name with ICE is being framed as routine enforcement.
It isn’t.
For the first time, routine domestic air travel is being used as a trigger for mass, suspicionless screening tied to a civil immigration database. This is not targeted enforcement. It’s population-level screening.
That matters.
TSA was created to protect freedom of movement, not to function as a civil enforcement filter. Under this policy, people aren’t flagged because they pose a security threat or aviation risk. They’re flagged because their civil immigration status conflicts with current executive enforcement priorities.
That is a mission flip.
Historically, immigration enforcement followed criminal custody or specific investigations. Here, the act of traveling itself becomes the trigger—no warrant, no individualized suspicion, no criminal charge.
The concern isn’t deportation alone. It’s the precedent.
If the government can mine universal travel data once for civil enforcement, it can do it for anything. Taxes. Debts. Protest activity. Political targeting.
That’s not normal enforcement. It’s a structural expansion of surveillance power, and once normalized, it doesn’t contract.
What do you think? Is this a reasonable security measure or a line we shouldn’t cross?