By admin 
(NewsNation) — The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration is again focusing on the nation’s interior, surging more federal officers and agents across the United States, including to America’s airports.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been deployed to at least 15 airports after entering an agreement with the Transportation Security Administration that allows the two federal agencies to share data, according to multiple media reports. ABC News reported that the tactic has led to at least 27 arrests since the operation began.
The pact is making it easier for ICE to identify immigrants who are in the United States illegally, including those who overstayed visas that previously gave them a legal pathway to remain in the country.
However, the Department of Homeland Security is now ramping up efforts to detain those individuals, including at airports. DHS officials said this week they have ended policies introduced under the Biden administration that allowed immigrants in the country illegally to travel around the country.
In a statement, DHS says the only flights those immigrants are now welcome on are those bound for those leaving the United States.
Under federal immigration laws, those who overstay their visas are considered immediately deportable, which makes them a target of an administration that has vowed the largest mass domestic deportation mission in modern history.
“Temporary means temporary, and these visa applicants told the federal government when applying for the visa that they would return home when the visa expired,” said Lora Ries, the director of a border security and immigration center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “And if they didn’t do that, they lied to the government, and they are now deportable.”
The airport enforcement effort included the arrest of a Johns Hopkins University researcher this week after she was detained in Baltimore for allegedly overstaying her visa.
In addition to sending ICE into airports, where they previously were sent to assist TSA agents during the government shutdown, the Trump administration is also changing how it is handling some cases of migrants seeking asylum.
Under a new U.S, Citizenship and Immigration Services rule, asylum officers can now refer certain affirmative asylum cases directly to immigration judges without first conducting an interview — a move the administration says will help reduce the backlog. Critics argue it removes an important step in the process and raises due process concerns.
Migrants, however, awaiting asylum hearings and other immigration-related matters that require them to appear in court have faced long delays that can often go on for years. But as the administration pushes to deport more immigrants who are either convicted criminals, face pending charges, or have overstayed previous orders for removal, the administration is seeking to quickly remove those immigrants rather than allowing them to stay in the U.S. as they wait out the process.
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Yet, Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Program, told NewsNation this week that shortening wait times for immigrants seeking a legal pathway to remain in the United States is part of the reason for much-needed reform to U.S. immigration legislation.
Gelatt was part of an MPI study this week showing that the population of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States reached a new peak of 15.8 million in 2024, after remaining around 11 million for years. The study found that about 5 million unauthorized immigrants remained in the United States between 2019 and 2024.
“Many people are trying to follow the rules of our immigration system as they understand them, but are caught somewhere in the process and haven’t yet gotten either an answer that tells them to go home or (about) some kind of permanent protection in the U.S.,” Gelatt told NewsNation Thursday.
“We really need to give people faster answers. People shouldn’t need to wait four years to see if they get asylum. If we can get timely and fair answers to people, I think that would send a message back to the sending country … of who can and can’t come to the United States.”
DHS officials insist that they are not speeding up removals, but they are also not rushing to build new detention centers. Instead, they’re expanding the use of existing state and county facilities to quickly detain and remove people already in the system
At the same time, Trump administration officials are also doubling down on pushing immigrants who may be facing removal to self-deport. After a Supreme Court ruling this week allowed the administration to move forward with ending Temporary Protective Status for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, DHS encouraged those individuals to return home on their own, promising a free plane ticket and a $2,600 check.
DHS says that during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office, more than three million migrants have left the United States, including an estimated 2.2 million who self-deported.
Still, those numbers haven’t kept White House border czar Tom Homan and senior adviser Stephen Miller from pushing for ICE to make more arrests. NewsNation reported earlier this week that ICE began an enforcement operation in New York City, which Homan said could spread to other cities as the crackdown continues.
Homan boasted about ICE making a record number of arrests in June, with 43,000 new ICE detentions added in the month alone and even more planned for July. The spike in arrests came in the wake of two fatal shootings involving ICE officers in Houston and Maine in June.
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