The New York Times reported that airport security officials around the country are sharing passenger data with federal immigration authorities. Oakland airport is in the dark about whether that’s happening here.
by Eli Wolfe and Esther Kaplan Dec. 16, 2025 (Berkeleyside.org)
We work for you — and we’re matching your donation 1:1! Our journalists attend city council and school board meetings, follow tips and make the calls to keep you informed on the important issues in Berkeley. Will you chip in today?
Yes, double my Berkeleyside donation with your matching gift!
The federal agency that handles security at American airports is handing data about all passengers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of an effort to catch and deport people, the New York Times has found. But Oakland airport officials are clueless about whether this is happening to travelers flying through OAK.
The Times reported on Friday that the Transportation Security Administration provides a list to ICE multiple times a week that includes air travelers who will be passing through airports. ICE officials can cross-reference people from the list to the agency’s database of people subject to deportation, then find and arrest them when they arrive for their flights.
This data sharing, which the Times says started in March, is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to engage in a massive deportation campaign. While ICE hasn’t released data on how many people have been arrested or deported due to the TSA’s sharing of passenger manifests, the Times reported that it has led to several high-profile arrests, including that of Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old college freshman who was arrested at a Boston airport on Nov. 20 and deported to Honduras. The Times found that an ICE office located near Laguna Beach called the Pacific Enforcement Response Center played a central role in Lopez Belloza’s arrest, and the airport program generally, by sending tips to immigration officers around the country.
We asked Oakland airport officials whether this data-sharing practice is underway in Oakland, where tens of thousands of people are expected to fly in and out of the airport for the holidays. We learned they’re in the dark.
“TSA doesn’t share that information with us,” David DeWitt, a spokesperson for the Port of Oakland, which oversees Oakland’s airport, said by email. “Your best bet would be to talk with TSA directly.”
We sent a list of questions to TSA. A spokesperson told us in an email that “This is nothing new.”
“Back in February, Secretary Noem reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country and do so without identification,” the spokesperson wrote. “Under President Trump, TSA and DHS will no longer tolerate this. This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”
The disclosures in the Times story may potentially dissuade some people from traveling by air, including to and from Oakland. This would be bad news for the airport, which has been struggling to attract travelers.
The San Francisco Standard reported on Monday that the number of passengers traveling through Oakland for domestic flights between September 2024 and September 2025 declined by 17% compared to the previous year. The decline in the first half of 2025 was the worst of all 93 major U.S. airports, the Standard reported, citing data from a website called LocalsInsider.com. Port officials have blamed this trend on a decrease in business travel.
The Oakland Port Commission changed the name of the airport to draw attention to the city’s proximity to its neighbor to the west. The Oakland City Council also recently killed a labor lawsuit the City Attorney had filed against Southwest, partly out of concern that it would drive the anchor tenant out of Oakland.
