Rep. Rashida Tlaib has introduced legislation that would prohibit ICE and Border Patrol from accessing air travelers' data held by the TSA, a bill the agency itself says would weaken America's defenses against terrorism.
The Michigan Democrat filed the "No TSA Data for ICE Act" on Tuesday, targeting a 2025 information-sharing agreement between the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Tlaib claims has turned airports into hunting grounds for immigration agents. The bill would bar ICE and Customs and Border Protection from accessing passenger screening records, travel records, and personally identifiable passenger information, including data purchased from private data brokers, currently shared under the agreement.
TSA fired back immediately. A spokesperson invoked the September 11 attacks in a pointed response, questioning whether Tlaib wants to recreate the kind of intelligence failures that left the country vulnerable more than two decades ago.
The agency's response left little room for diplomatic interpretation. A TSA spokesperson told Fox News Digital:
"As we approach the 25th anniversary of the horrific terror attacks of 9/11, it's not shocking that some in the Democrat Party would want to neuter the Department of Homeland Security's ability to protect Americans from terrorists."
The spokesperson went further, framing the bill as a direct threat to the interagency coordination that DHS was created to ensure.
"DHS was established to prevent information silos that could create blind spots against threats. Does Rep. Tlaib want our enemies to be empowered to attack the U.S. again?"
That argument carries weight. The Department of Homeland Security exists precisely because the federal government failed to share intelligence across agencies before September 11, 2001. Tlaib's bill would rebuild one of those walls, this time between TSA and the immigration enforcement arms of the same department.
Tlaib cast the legislation in starkly different terms. In a statement, she accused TSA of actively facilitating what she called ICE's quota-driven enforcement operations at airports.
"Through an information-sharing agreement signed in 2025, TSA is readily offering up our immigrant residents to suffer at the hands of ICE agents so they can fulfill their daily arrest quota. One source from ICE even said it makes for 'easy targets' at airports, a disgusting exploitation of immigrants in status limbo."
The "easy targets" claim, which Tlaib attributed to an unnamed ICE source, has not been independently verified. She linked to a CBS News report as the basis for the characterization, but the quote originates from her statement, not from a confirmed on-the-record ICE official.
Tlaib also said immigrants should be able to "safely fly in this country without the fear of arrest or deportation" and accused TSA of being "complicit in ICE expanding its chaos and cruelty to target our communities in our airports." That language, "our communities", is worth pausing on. Tlaib is describing people in the country illegally as members of a community the federal government should protect from its own law enforcement agencies. For millions of Americans who waited in line, filed paperwork, and followed the rules, that framing does not sit well.
The legislation goes beyond blocking immigration enforcement access to traveler data. It would also prohibit DHS from barring individuals from trusted traveler programs like TSA PreCheck based on what the bill describes as First Amendment-protected activity, attending protests or speaking out against the administration.
That provision raises its own questions. TSA PreCheck is a voluntary program that grants expedited screening to travelers who pass a background check. Tlaib's bill would limit the government's discretion to revoke or deny that privilege based on certain categories of conduct. Whether protest attendance constitutes a legitimate security concern or a civil liberties issue is a debate the bill's text appears designed to force, though, as Tlaib's past defense of convicted antifa attackers suggests, her definition of protected political activity may stretch further than most voters would accept.
The No TSA Data for ICE Act has virtually no chance of advancing. Fox News Digital noted the bill has little prospect of getting a vote in the current Republican-controlled Congress. But passage was likely never the point.
Progressive Democrats have near-universally opposed the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts since President Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. Tlaib's bill is the latest in a series of legislative gestures aimed at constraining ICE operations, this time by severing the data links between agencies within the same department.
The political backdrop is turbulent. Federal immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens earlier this year, drawing criticism from both parties. DHS went unfunded for 76 days during what Fox News Digital described as the longest partial government shutdown in history. Those episodes gave Democrats ammunition, but they also underscored the operational pressures facing an enforcement apparatus that progressive lawmakers have spent years trying to defund, restructure, or hamstring.
Tlaib's effort fits a familiar pattern among the furthest-left members of the Democratic caucus. The same progressive wing that has seen voters reject candidates like Cori Bush in competitive primaries continues to push legislation that polls poorly outside deep-blue districts. The disconnect between the Squad's priorities and the broader electorate's concerns about border security and public safety has become a recurring theme in Democratic politics.
If enacted, the bill could significantly curb DHS's ability to coordinate immigration enforcement across its own sub-agencies, a result that would please immigration activists but alarm anyone who remembers why the department was created in the first place. Tlaib frames that coordination as oppression. TSA frames it as the basic architecture of national security. The gap between those two positions is not a policy disagreement. It is a fundamental divide over whether enforcing immigration law at airports is a legitimate government function.
Meanwhile, intra-party tensions continue to simmer. Sen. John Fetterman has openly questioned whether the Democratic Party has room for voices that break with progressive orthodoxy, a sign that not every Democrat is comfortable with the direction members like Tlaib are pulling the party.
And the broader progressive movement's electoral struggles suggest voters are paying attention. Socialist primary victories in New York have deepened the party's internal divide, forcing Democratic leadership to choose between its activist base and the moderate voters it needs to win national elections.
Strip away the rhetoric and the bill asks a simple question: should the agencies inside DHS share information with each other? Before September 11, the answer was no, and the consequences were catastrophic. Congress created DHS specifically to tear down the walls between intelligence and enforcement agencies. Tlaib wants to rebuild one of those walls because she does not like what immigration agents do with the information on the other side.
The TSA spokesperson's question, does Tlaib want America's enemies empowered to attack again?, is pointed, but it is not unfair. When a member of Congress introduces legislation designed to prevent federal law enforcement agencies from sharing data within the same department, the burden falls on her to explain why that makes the country safer. Tlaib's answer, that illegal immigrants deserve to fly without fear of arrest, is not a security argument. It is an argument that enforcement itself is the problem.
That position may play well in Tlaib's district. It does not play well with the taxpayers, lawful immigrants, and frequent flyers who expect the government to know who is boarding an airplane, and to act on what it knows.
