The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has expanded immigration enforcement at airports, with foreign nationals whose visas have expired now being arrested while passing through major airports across the country, according to a report by *The New York Times*.
The report said plainclothes immigration officers have detained travelers at check-in counters, boarding gates, and arrival terminals in at least 15 U.S. airports in recent weeks, marking a significant escalation of the administration's nationwide immigration crackdown.
Among those reportedly affected are spouses of U.S. citizens, professionals awaiting work visa renewals, and former exchange programme participants. While some arrests have been carried out discreetly, others were captured on video by fellow passengers and widely shared on social media.
According to The New York Times, the operation expands an existing information-sharing arrangement between the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under which airlines provide passenger information to federal authorities. The programme previously focused on individuals with existing deportation orders but has reportedly been broadened to include people whose visas have expired.
The expanded policy significantly increases the number of people who could face detention, as hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals overstay their visas each year. Many of them are legally awaiting decisions on visa extensions or permanent residency applications and remain authorized to work while their cases are pending.
In the past, visa overstays were generally not treated as a top deportation priority unless the individual had committed criminal offences. The Trump administration, however, has adopted a stricter approach, treating all visa overstays as immigration violations subject to enforcement.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the administration is working to prevent undocumented immigrants from traveling within the United States.
"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 spokesperson said.
The department, however, did not confirm whether the airport enforcement programme had officially been expanded.
Although DHS has not disclosed the number of people detained under the initiative, the arrests come as the White House pushes ICE to intensify immigration enforcement nationwide. The administration has reportedly set a target of approximately 2,000 immigration arrests each day.
Among the cases highlighted by The New York Times was that of 27-year-old Ecuadorian national Chantal Morales Rojas, who was detained by plainclothes officers while boarding a domestic flight in Denver after spending the weekend with the family she had previously worked for as an au pair.
The report also cited the case of a Ugandan woman living with sickle cell anaemia who was traveling in a wheelchair despite having an active asylum application. An Australian national who overstayed his visa was also reportedly arrested after authorities initially released him during an encounter at Las Vegas airport, only to detain him the following day in Los Angeles.
The latest enforcement measures underscore the Trump administration's intensified immigration policy, with U.S. airports increasingly becoming key locations for identifying and detaining individuals accused of violating the country's immigration laws.
