‘Papers, please’: Immigration agents check IDs of passengers arriving from domestic flight…(And It Begins…)
RT.com
25 Feb, 2017
Travelers entering New York City after a cross-country flight were met by border agents who insisted everyone show them official identification. They were seeking to serve a deportation order on an illegal immigrant.
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alerted Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City that an undocumented immigrant was suspected to be arriving on Delta flight 1583 from San Francisco.
CBP officers were at the gate to check every deplaning passenger’s ID, until they identified the person ordered to be deported by an immigration judge.
Officials say the suspect, who was convicted for domestic assault, driving while impaired, and violating an order of protection, was not found on the plane.
In a Thursday statement from CBP, they said that the agency “often receives requests from our law enforcement partners to assist in various ways, including identifying a person of interest. CBP will assist when able to.”
Jordan Wells, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that this is not an ordinary occurrence.
“They’ll occasionally pull someone off of a flight, or officers will come on and make an arrest,” Wells told the Independent. “It’s a much more surgical thing than setting up a dragnet. That’s what is so alarming about the way that this played out.”
Matt O’Rourke, a passenger who was asked to show his ID, said that a flight attendant repeatedly told the plane full of passengers to have their identification.
“I flew almost 200,000 miles last year,” O’Rouke told the Gothamist. “I’ve never had my ID checked getting off a domestic flight.”
The Rest…HERE
