Immigration agents, wearing regular clothing instead of uniform, have started detaining travelers at boarding gates and jet bridges, targeting people over visa overstays rather than existing deportation orders or criminal records. The Department of Homeland Security receives passenger information before every flight through the TSA, giving ICE agents foreknowledge of where someone will be and at what time.
The case drawing the most attention: Chantal Alejandra Morales Rojas, an Ecuadorian citizen, was pulled off a jet bridge in Denver on July 20 as she tried to board her flight. Footage shows agents detaining her while a friend shouts for help. DHS calls Morales Rojas “an illegal alien” who came in 2024 and has been here on an expired visa since Jan. 2025. Morales Rojas’ attorneys say she entered the country legally on a J-1 exchange visa in 2023 and had received work authorization while an application to stay in the country was pending. Even if DHS is right about her expired visa, the idea that this is what enforcement should look like is absurd.
Morales Rojas isn’t an isolated incident. CNN reports on a similar case out of Las Vegas:
An attempted arrest at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas ended when ICE agents walked away leaving a man on the ground with one handcuff on. The two agents were trying to forcibly detain the man on July 13 when onlookers confronted them, according to police and federal officials. A TSA officer told bystanders to keep back, video of the attempted arrest shows.
The man being arrested was identified as Phu Nguyen, 57, in the US on an expired visa, according to DHS. After a “crowd of anti-ICE agitators surrounded officers,” they stopped the arrest to “de-escalate the situation and for officer safety,” a statement from the department said. Las Vegas police removed the handcuff from his wrist and he was released after they determined he had no outstanding warrants.
Nguyen, a citizen of Australia who was born in Vietnam, was taken into custody the next day when he landed at Los Angeles International Airport. His two-year visa had expired in 2015, DHS said.
Overstaying a visa is generally a civil violation, not the kind of public-safety threat ICE has always pointed to as its priority for street-level enforcement. Under Trump, though, it is grounds for unidentified agents to pull someone off a jet bridge in front of horrified fellow passengers, pending case or not.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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