Tucked within SFO’s International Terminal is a windowless room officials call an “in-transit lounge.” Immigration lawyers and the people who’ve been detained inside call it a jail.
More than two dozen immigrants, mostly green-card holders with past arrests, have been held at San Francisco International Airport this year without access to dedicated medical care, attorneys or even beds for more than three days, a violation of Customs and Border Protection’s guidelines, a Chronicle investigation found. Some of the immigrants were taken to SFO after landing at other California airports, including Fresno Yosemite International more than 180 miles away.
A 67-year-old diabetic, who landed in Fresno on a flight from Guadalajara, Mexico, said he was driven to SFO and detained for eight days earlier this year without a way to check his blood sugar. He called the airport detention “psychological torture.”
He asked that his name not be published out of fear it could affect his legal status. Immigration agents boarded the Volaris flight calling his name, he told the Chronicle through a Spanish interpreter. Soon, he was loaded into a van with one other person. Both sat with cuffed ankles and hands.
Article continues below this ad
“I feel like I was kidnapped,” he said.
The man, who has been legally in the country for 50 years, said he slept sitting upright in a chair each night. The overhead lights were always on. His body ached. He was offered no change of clothes, so he wore the same pair of jeans and underwear his entire stay.
A 67-year-old Fresno County man, a lawful permanent resident, told the Chronicle he felt he was “kidnapped” after being detained by immigration agents, driven to SFO and held there for more than a week.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
He was eventually transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, like 18 of the 25 other people held at SFO for more than 72 hours through July of this year.
CBP policy caps such detentions at 72 hours, but federal data shows the agency has detained more than 400 people at international airports across the country for longer than that since January, including 146 who had valid green cards.
Article continues below this ad
After Miami, SFO had the second-highest number of detentions that lasted longer than 72 hours and resulted in an ICE transfer. The San Francisco airport also had the largest share of green card holders among detainees, with 19 among its 25 cases.
Customs and Border Protections did not respond to a detailed list of questions. But spokesperson Jaime Ruiz said in a statement that the agency “provides guidance to ports of entry to ensure that all applicants for admission are treated fairly and with dignity, and that inspections and examinations are conducted in accordance with current laws, regulations, and court decisions.”
Ruiz also said those entering the United States bear “the burden of proving admissibility.”
“Under U.S. immigration law, all aliens seeking entry to the United States as temporary visitors are presumed to be intending immigrants unless they establish, to the satisfaction of the examining officer, that they are eligible for admission,” Ruiz said. “To be admitted, a traveler must demonstrate that they have overcome all applicable grounds of inadmissibility listed in section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
That section of immigration law allows officers to deny admission to the country based on “crimes involving moral turpitude.”
Article continues below this ad
While videos of violent arrests by plainclothes ICE agents at domestic terminals have gone viral, the interactions that lead to lengthy airport detentions typically begin at the customs counter as passengers wait in line. Those flagged for a past arrest — including cases that involved nonviolent offenses or have been expunged from state records — are taken to an interview room, a dozen immigration attorneys told the Chronicle.
They are denied access to their phones, separated from their luggage and eventually held in a “lounge.”
Before President Donald Trump’s deportation crackdown, green card holders flagged during customs screenings were routinely released from the airport with a follow-up appointment, the attorneys said. Now, lawful permanent residents and other visa holders can spend days with limited access to family in a guarded room with bench-style couches, chairs and a television.
ICE arrests have been on the rise, with the administration setting records in July with 4,300 arrests in California and about 50,000 nationwide.
Article continues below this ad
Told of the Chronicle’s findings about SFO detentions in excess of 72 hours, Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, whose district includes the airport, demanded a tour of the lounge at CBP’s SFO office on Aug. 20. Under federal law, any member of Congress can visit a detention facility without notice.
Agents turned him away, he said.
Six days later, he tried again and was allowed inside. He said he observed five people in the holding room. Usually, CBP agents tell detainees that officers are waiting on certified court records related to an old conviction before they can make a decision about their admission to the country, attorneys said.
Federal officials initially denied Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, access to the SFO detention facilities. On Wednesday, Aug. 26, he tried again and was allowed inside. He observed five people in the holding room.
Provided by Kevin Mullin
“They were not hiding from the fact this is a definitive policy shift from the Trump administration,” Mullin told the Chronicle of the federal officers stationed at SFO, hours after his Aug. 26 visit. “They would not suggest there was a quota being handed out, but there is clearly direction being given from up top.”
Article continues below this ad
“This is no way to treat human beings,” he said.
SFO is owned by the city and county. The airport itself does not have any authority over how CBP uses its facilities. SFO spokesperson Doug Yakel said the Department of Homeland Security has extensive regulatory authority over U.S. airports and that CBP facilities operate outside of an airport’s jurisdiction.
“SFO is not involved in any decisions about approving or denying entry into the United States,” Yakel said.
‘Not free to leave’
The federal government’s power is at its peak when people are trying to enter, or reenter, the country. Customs officers’ broad authority at a port of entry, combined with a Trump executive order to detain all “inadmissible and removable aliens,” has created a mechanism to strip green card holders of their status behind closed doors.
That’s especially true in San Francisco, which had the highest share of green card holders in any region, with at least 10 cases of 72 hour-plus holds.
CBP’s “National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search” manual says “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours” and that “every effort must be made to hold them for the least amount of time required.” The standards were published in 2015 and are still posted to the agency’s website.
The Chronicle spoke to four local attorneys representing six green card holders detained at SFO for six or more days since summer 2025.
Three of the detainees told their attorneys that customs agents never specified why they were being held at SFO. Others understood that agents were waiting to obtain court documents after prior convictions flagged them in the system upon their arrival. The most recent case the Chronicle reviewed was a woman held from July 31 through Aug. 5.
About 6,100 international travelers passing through Northern California airports were determined “inadmissible” and turned away by customs agents from January through July. The vast majority of those people wait with customs officers until they can get on a return flight. In nearly 80% of cases this year, that took less than eight hours, CBP data shows.
Passengers exit near the U.S. Customs and Border Protection area in Terminal G at San Francisco International Airport on Friday.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
That’s what the “lounge” is designed to accommodate. But under Trump, its use has changed.
Marissa Hatton, a civil rights attorney who represents three green card holders who were transported to SFO by immigration officers after landing in Fresno, described the space as an inhumane makeshift jail.
“People are not free to leave, which is a key marker of something being used as a detention facility,” she said.
People held at SFO told their attorneys they didn’t leave the “lounge” except to go to another holding area with an officer escort. Agents gave them food from the airport’s concession stands, such as sandwiches, salads or hamburgers.
While the median age of detained green card holders held for more than three days was 44 across the country, the median age of those detained in San Francisco was 57. Some of the Bay Area detainees were in their 60s and were never screened by a medical professional upon arrival, their attorneys said.
CBP’s national standards say that “officers/agents must ask detainees about, and visually inspect for any sign of injury, illness, or physical or mental health concerns” and ask questions about medications.
One man’s wife brought agents two sets of clothes over six days for her husband to change into. Two described sleeping in a chair for days with the lights always on, and said they left suffering from sleep deprivation. The niece of one woman held at SFO said her aunt spent most of her stay crying on a couch.
Two were allowed daily calls to family. The calls were timed, supervised and lasted five minutes. Others were offered no contact with family at all.
The black box
Many attorneys are only just learning about prolonged airport detentions, as the government’s immigration strategies change in an effort to hit the Trump administration’s goal of deporting 1 million people each year.
“We are in a black box when it comes to understanding the guidance that is out there,” said Jennifer Whitlock, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center.
Whitlock fears that between airports and land ports of entry, detainees are regularly being coerced by agents to give up their green cards or other visas to make all the trouble “go away.”
The 67-year-old man who spoke to the Chronicle said his van ride to SFO took about five hours. He landed in Fresno on March 10 around 11 p.m. and arrived in San Francisco early the next morning.
“I just kept thinking, ‘Why did they arrest me? Why?” he recalled. “And I was worried about my medicine.”
He has deteriorating vision and described himself as mostly blind, and also had high blood pressure, for which he takes four prescribed pills daily. At the time agents took him into custody, he didn’t have any insulin on him.
A 67-year-old man and lawful permanent resident who was held at SFO for eight days sorts through his medications. The man, who is diabetic, said his insulin was only tested once during his detention.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
A Fresno County man who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation holds his Read ID, Social Security and permanent-resident cards.
Photos by Santago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
A Fresno County man who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation holds his Read ID, Social Security and permanent-resident cards.
Photos by Santago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
Once he arrived at SFO, he said, agents allowed him to contact his son, who drove from Fresno to provide insulin and a glucose monitor. But the glucose monitor did not work because it didn’t have all the required parts.
On day two, the man said a medical professional tested his blood sugar. It came back at 280 — well above a safe range. Blood sugar levels that high cause increased thirst, fatigue, blurred vision and headaches.
Airport paramedics arrived to treat him. He soon got access to the insulin his son delivered, along with his other medications. Normally, he’d check his blood sugar daily, if not multiple times a day. No one checked it for the rest of the time he was at the airport, he said.
Mullin said he questioned agents about medical access during his visit and was told officers will only give detainees medications if their names are printed on the bottle. He said he was told there are on-call paramedics and medical staff at the airport, and that in case of a life-threatening emergency, agents would take a detainee to a nearby hospital.
The 67-year-old struggled to sleep for more than an hour at a time. People were constantly coming and going, he said. At times, up to four other detainees were in the lounge. He was given a thin blanket that he said was not sufficient to keep him warm.
Agents, he said, shuffled him between different rooms each day: the main “lounge” space from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., a second room from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. and a third from 1 a.m. until about 4 a.m. Agents did not explain the moves. All the rooms were similar and all had the same uncomfortable chairs, he said.
Every three days, he was offered an escort to a shower inside a business called “Freshen Up!” in the international terminal that offers pay-as-you-go bathing and toiletries. It was the only time he left the CBP office. Agents covered the cost of the showers, listed at $30 on the business’ website. Afterward, he changed back into dirty clothes.
The man was held at a lounge that has since been replaced. The new lounge is about 3,000 square feet, said Yakel, the SFO spokesperson. That’s the space Mullin saw during his recent visit.
It was only recently handed over to CBP as part of sweeping renovations to the Dianne Feinstein International Terminal that included the 34,000-square-foot space between terminals A and G. Records filed with the city’s environmental department as part of the space’s “green” certification show June 1 as the planned activation date. The same document put estimated project costs at about $120 million.
The new lounge has its own shower and laundry, Yakel said. He also said the airport has no authority over the site beyond making physical improvements.
During Mullin’s visit, the congressman saw a stack of pillows and blankets in a corner. He said there was no privacy, but there were now couches in addition to chairs. He saw someone asleep, laying down.
“There’s no way I’d want to stay in that congregate setting for a night, let alone a whole week,” he said.
A fishing expedition
Michael Mehr has been an immigration attorney since 1979. He said that as long as he can remember, green card holders flagged for issues at customs would have been released from the airport with an appointment to return to meet with officers for “deferred inspection.”
Typically, he said, those interviews were scheduled two or three weeks later, giving immigrants time to gather records and consult with an attorney, who would often attend the appointment.
Clerical issues and minor convictions could be cleared up, Mehr said. Proof that convictions had been expunged or vacated would often be enough to keep a green card intact.
By last summer, though, immigration attorneys noticed that follow-up appointments weren’t being scheduled as often. Instead, clients were being transferred to ICE detention directly from the airport. They called the shift the “death of deferred inspection.”
Tae Heung “Will” Kim’s case in July 2025 made it clear just how drastically things had changed.
Although nearly all of the SFO detentions that exceeded 72 hours have gone unreported, Kim’s made headlines. He arrived at the airport upon returning from his brother’s wedding in South Korea. The green card holder expected to pass through SFO on his way back to Texas, where he worked as a scientific researcher. But he was detained at the airport for eight days over a 10-year-old charge for marijuana possession, and ultimately spent four months in an ICE detention center.
A month later, something similar happened to a client of San Francisco attorney Christine Raymond. The man was detained after returning from India with his wife. Raymond said agents refused to accept copies she provided of court records that agents said were needed to determine his admissibility to the country. The agents insisted the records must come directly from the court.
“It took them a week to get the records,” she said.
Demonstrators are seen during an ICE Out of SFO protest on May 1.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
That pattern has quietly continued at airports for the last year.
“If you have anything that even smells like contact with the criminal justice system, they will use that as an opportunity to go on a fishing expedition,” said Whitlock, the attorney with the National Immigration Law Center.
Another client of Mehr’s, a green card holder from Vietnam, was held at the airport early last month for six days because of an old conviction that the state had expunged from her record more than two decades ago. Officers said they needed the original, certified court records to review her conviction.
Expunging a charge in California will mark it as “dismissed” in most databases used for background checks. But for immigration authorities, that distinction doesn’t matter. Expunged convictions still generate a “hit” in the system. Vacating a charge, however, actually removes the conviction.
Mullin questioned agents about the death of deferred inspection appointments. He said they confirmed the change began early last year. They now regularly hold people instead of giving them parole to leave CBP custody, Mullin said. Agents told him they have always had the legal ability to hold people, but did not typically exercise that right before Trump took office for a second time.
‘On notice’
The immigration laws customs officials rely on are broad, and don’t include any limit on how far into the past a crime could have occurred to trigger more scrutiny, said Emma Winger, an immigration attorney with American Immigration Council. That’s why a low-level drug offense from 30 years ago can land someone in ICE custody.
Mullin said agents confirmed that courts being closed over the weekend could prolong someone’s detention to five or six days. Yet, he recalled, they bristled when he referred to those in their custody as “detainees.”
The Prison Rape Elimination Act requires inspections of all holding facilities every three years. SFO was last audited in 2024, when it was still using the Terminal G space.
Inspection reports show similar holding facilities inside airports in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago (Midway and O’Hare), Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Kentucky, New York (JFK) and Washington D.C. (Dulles).
Mullin thinks he’s the first congressional member to tour one of the airport holding rooms, but hopes his colleagues will join him. He said CBP was surprised by his initial visit, when agents denied him entry, but were courteous and professional once they understood the law. While inside, he wasn’t permitted to speak to anyone being held.
“We put them on notice,” he told the Chronicle. “We are going to continue to provide oversight because of the nature of these conditions and the fear and anxiety they are operating in.”
A 67-year-old lawful permanent resident who has diabetes said his insulin levels were only checked once during his eight-day detention at SFO.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
Hatton, the civil rights attorney, previously successfully challenged the conditions inside an ICE facility where detainees were held temporarily at 630 Sansome St. in San Francisco’s Financial District. A federal judge approved an injunction in November ordering the Department of Justice to immediately provide mattresses, blankets, medical care and other basic necessities to the immigrants held there.
The cells at the Sansome Street holding facility are not designed for stays longer than 12 hours, despite that people were often being held there for days. In June, the same federal judge, in a connected case, ruled that ICE could no longer arrest immigrants at courthouse hearings, or keep them for more than 12 hours in short-term holding cells.
“It looks like what they’re doing now is focusing in on airports and people who are traveling,” Hatton said. “Which just shows that they’re willing to try to stay two steps ahead of the courts and to conduct immigration enforcement in places that they haven’t historically done once other avenues are not available to them anymore.”
Hatton is among the attorneys representing the 67-year-old man held at SFO for eight days. She helped secure his release from ICE custody after clearing up a 20-year-old misdemeanor on his criminal record.
Officers at the California City Detention Center in Kern County, where the man was detained for five months, and treated him “less than human,” he said. He struggled to access medical care for his deteriorating vision. The food was terrible and he was often too hot.
But unlike at SFO, he said, at least he had a bed.