You Gave TSA Your Information to Board a Plane. Who Else Can Use It?
By The Redemption Project Newsroom
Government Desk
Every commercial airline passenger gives the government a small packet of information before boarding a plane.
Name, date of birth, gender marker, flight itinerary and, sometimes, a Known Traveler Number or redress number.
Most travelers understand that exchange as part of airport security. The airline collects the information, the Transportation Security Administration screens it, and a boarding pass is issued, extra screening is required or a traveler is not allowed to board.
But recent national reporting has raised a larger question: Can information collected so a person can safely board an aircraft also be used to help immigration officers locate and arrest that person?
Internal records cited by Reuters and later reports show TSA provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement with information involving more than 31,000 travelers from January 2025 through February 2026. Those referrals led to more than 800 arrests, though the figure is not a count of arrests made inside airports.
That distinction matters, but it does not erase the concern. Passenger information can tell the government not only who a person is, but when and where that person is expected to travel.
That makes it more than an identity record.
It can become a locator.
What Secure Flight was built to do
The TSA program at the center of the issue is called Secure Flight.
It was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to improve passenger screening and reduce the problem of airlines separately comparing travelers against federal watchlists. Airlines transmit passenger information to TSA before a flight, and TSA determines whether the traveler receives ordinary screening, enhanced screening, expedited screening, additional identity review or is prevented from boarding.
The system’s public purpose has long centered on aviation security, terrorism watchlists and transportation threats. That does not mean Secure Flight exists in isolation. TSA and ICE are both part of the Department of Homeland Security, and federal privacy notices often allow records to be shared for law-enforcement purposes.
But there is a difference between what a legal notice technically permits and what most travelers understand when they buy a domestic airline ticket. A person entering a birth date into an airline website likely understands that the government will check whether they are cleared to fly. They may not understand that the same information could help immigration officers determine when to meet someone at an airport.
The Tennessee connection
This is not only a national privacy debate.
On July 14, ICE arrested Southwest Airlines flight attendant Lorenzo Thompson at Nashville International Airport. DHS said Thompson entered the United States from Jamaica in 2021 on a visa that expired later that year and remained after it expired. His supporters and co-workers have said the case is more complicated, including claims that he had work authorization or a pending asylum matter.
Public reporting has not established whether a Secure Flight referral led to Thompson’s arrest. That distinction is important. The Nashville case should not be used to claim more than the record proves.
But it does show why Tennessee airports need answers. Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Tri-Cities all operate inside the same federal passenger-screening system.
