Airport and financial-system crackdowns widen Trump administration’s immigration enforcement push

The Trump administration has expanded immigration enforcement into two new arenas — U.S. airports and the banking system — arresting people with pending visa, asylum or green card cases as part of a push for 2,000 daily immigration arrests, while also directing banks and regulators to tighten scrutiny of undocumented immigrants’ financial activity. Airline employees have in some cases refused to cooperate with agents, and at least one Trump voter has publicly criticized the crackdown after his fiancée was detained at a Houston airport.

What is happening at airports?

ICE and the TSA, both under the Department of Homeland Security, have expanded joint operations to make as many as three dozen arrests a day at U.S. airports, according to the Wall Street Journal as cited by the Guardian. Agents are detaining people away from security checkpoints — at ticket counters or boarding gates — rather than at the checkpoint itself, a shift from DHS’s past practice of largely avoiding enforcement in ways that could disrupt domestic travel. A DHS spokesperson told the New York Times the goal is to make sure people in the country illegally “can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

The New York Times reported that those detained include a former au pair, a wheelchair-using asylum seeker with sickle cell anemia, and women married to U.S. citizens who are in the process of applying for permanent residency. San Francisco immigration lawyer Ghassan Shamieh, who had four clients detained at airports over ten days, said none had criminal records: “You are talking about people with legitimate pending applications.”

Why are airline workers pushing back?

In Dallas, a federal agent reportedly tried to board a Southwest Airlines flight to find a target, but a gate agent refused to let the officer on without a judge-signed warrant, and airline staff blocked the agent from viewing a computer screen during boarding. Southwest told the Wall Street Journal it follows the law and requires proper legal documentation before releasing customer information to law enforcement. Despite that pushback, hundreds of arrests have already occurred at airports since ICE and TSA began cooperating last year, and airline industry representatives met with DHS in July to voice concerns about the policy shift, including worries that tense confrontations could create safety risks for passengers and employees.

How is the crackdown reaching into banking?

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Arizona bankers on Thursday that the administration is moving to stop undocumented immigrants, criminal enterprises and cartels from using U.S. banks for payroll schemes, fraud and illicit financing. “This administration will not tolerate blatant abuse of our financial system, nor will it permit risks posed by the extension of financial services to illegal aliens,” Bessent said, adding that banks are not being asked to enforce border policy but to flag suspicious patterns early.

The effort follows an executive order Trump signed May 19, “Restoring Integrity to America’s Financial System,” which directed Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, NCUA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to tighten customer-identification and due-diligence rules and reconsider how banks assess credit risk for people without work authorization. The order set deadlines: guidance within 60 days, a proposed due-diligence rule within 90 days, and a customer-identification proposal within 180 days, by November. Bessent said Treasury has met its first deadlines — in June, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued guidance on spotting patterns tied to unlawful employment, shell companies and payroll tax evasion, and the OCC issued an advisory on lending to unauthorized workers. Legal analysts at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton noted the order itself doesn’t create new compliance obligations for banks but sets in motion agency actions that could reshape anti-money-laundering rules.

How has this affected individual families?

John Gannon, a 75-year-old Texas businessman and self-described lifelong Republican who voted for Trump, said he now regrets that vote after his fiancée, 45-year-old Yasmin Suarez Reyes, was detained by ICE agents at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport on July 24. Gannon said eight plainclothes agents swarmed her without explanation as the couple prepared to fly to a furniture convention in Las Vegas. “They’re destroying families, jobs,” he told CBS News, saying he’d ask Trump directly: “What are you doing? Go after the criminals… but leave the mom and pops and the kids alone.”

Suarez Reyes’ attorney, Anne Kennedy, said her client entered the U.S. legally in October 2023 under the Visa Waiver Program using her Spanish citizenship, then filed for asylum in January 2024 before her 90-day stay expired, and later obtained a work permit and Texas driver’s license. She would have a path to a green card if she married Gannon, but ICE detained her for deportation processing because her original permission to stay had lapsed. DHS confirmed the arrest, saying the administration “is not going to ignore the rule of law.”

Why this matters

Together, the airport arrests and the banking directives show the administration extending immigration enforcement beyond the border and workplaces into everyday infrastructure — travel and financial services — often targeting people with pending legal cases rather than criminal records. The moves have drawn friction not just from immigration attorneys and advocates but from within the airline industry and, in at least one documented case, from a Trump supporter directly affected by the policy.

Sources

• The Guardian
• CBS News — Bessent announces crackdown on undocumented immigrants’ use of U.S. banks · Trump voter pleads for fiancée’s release after ICE arrest: "They’re destroying families"

Featured photo: Geoff Livingston from DC, USA via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)