Lawmakers condemn ICE arrest at San Francisco International Airport: Detainment unrelated to deployments by federal agents to help the TSA

“This is the face of America,” one individual in the crowd yelled out.“Congratulations.” 

In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security said that two individuals, Angelina Lopez-Jimenez and Wendy Godinez-Lopez, were arrested at SFO on March 22. The post said both had a final order of removal from a judge in 2019. The arrest came before the Trump administration deployed ICE agents to airports around the country Monday in an attempt to alleviate travel delays caused by the partial government shutdown that’s forcing Transportation Security Agents to work without pay, the post read. 

“While being escorted to the international terminal for processing, Lopez-Jimenez attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers,” the March 23 X post read. “ICE is working as quickly as possible to repatriate the family unit to their home country of Guatemala.” 

Bay Area lawmakers reiterated that the arrests were not part of any broader ICE operation at SFO, which contracts out its security screening services to a private company that is not affected by the government shutdown, SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel said in an email. Legislators condemned the nature of the arrests, however. 

“ICE needs to get the hell out of San Francisco and San Francisco International Airport,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said in a statement Monday. “What we saw last night —  federal agents terrorizing a woman and child — is cruel and unacceptable.” 

A joint statement from U.S. representatives Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, shared a similar sentiment and said videos of the detainment are another example of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies “terrorizing communities across America.” 

“After killing people in our streets and detaining U.S. citizens, ICE has lost all credibility and trust with the public. We demand immediate answers as to the mother’s and her child’s condition and the grounds for their detainment,” the statement read. 

Because SFO is under federal jurisdiction, there have been a handful of ICE detainments there since the beginning of the year, Nani Friedman, communications officer for Faith in Action, which operates the county’s rapid response hotline, said. 

The group isn’t seeing an enforcement surge at that location beyond those individual detainments, however, Friedman acknowledged videos of the most recent arrest have sparked fear amongst community members. 

“This is another one that was very visible and scared a lot of people. We’re definitely hearing the ripple of fear this is creating,” she said. “We don’t see that it points to a possible trend of increased immigration enforcement at the airport beyond what we’re already seeing.”  

Although SFO is not presently experiencing a surge of ICE agent presence, Wiener’s statement condemned the impact that sending immigration officers into airports would bring across the country. 

“Yesterday’s incident at SFO shows that this brutal expansion of ICE activity into airports will only bring more chaos, stress and trauma to millions of people just trying to get through an airport,” the statement read.