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\n With Donald Trump deploying federal agents to TSA checkpoints, an ICE agent is seen at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on March 23, 2026.\u00a0Photo: Mostafa Bassim\/Anadolu via Getty Images <\/p>\n
\n With Donald Trump deploying federal agents to TSA checkpoints, an ICE agent is seen at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on March 23, 2026.\u00a0Photo: Mostafa Bassim\/Anadolu via Getty Images <\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Mathew_Rodriguez_Headshot-copy-e1774629985202.jpeg\")
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Mathew Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican writer and author based in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
The night before we were set to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, I approached my partner with a confession: For the first time that I can remember, I was afraid of flying with a Latino last name.<\/p>\n
It was a new sort of affront I had to steel myself against. Air travel is filled with moments \u2014\u00a0buying basic economy tickets, being herded through winding security lines like cattle, squishing your limbs into a compact seat \u2014 that smoosh you until you feel subhuman, usually along class lines.<\/p>\n
In the days leading up to our flight to Las Vegas, however, I saw the indignities of the airport mount as President Donald Trump deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents<\/a> into America\u2019s terminals, turning an already-debasing necessity into something more chilling.<\/p>\n If one thing has been consistent in ICE\u2019s ever expanding mission, it\u2019s that the agency is being used by the administration to instill fear.<\/p>\n Certainly, that\u2019s how I felt after my experience. At JFK, an ICE agent was taking the customary Transportation Security Administration role of checking IDs at security. Everything, though, seemed to be running as normal. When I handed over my passport, however, he asked me a question I hadn\u2019t heard him ask anyone else in front of me \u2014 most of whom presented as white: \u201cDo you have a second form of photo ID?\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t be sure what motivated the agent to ask me, and apparently no one else near me, this question, but his request of me was difficult to separate from ICE\u2019s role not only as brutal enforcers of Trump\u2019s deportation regime, but also its use as his personal police force<\/a>. If one thing has been consistent in ICE\u2019s ever-expanding mission, it\u2019s that the agency is being used by the administration to instill fear<\/a>.<\/p>\n Later, it was impossible not to think about what my brief, eventually harmless encounter with the agent might portend. Shortly after Trump deployed ICE agents to airports, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon may have tipped the administration\u2019s hand. Bannon speculated on his \u201cWar Room\u201dpodcast that the immigration force\u2019s presence at TSA security checkpoints was a \u201ctest run<\/a>\u201d ahead of the November midterms<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maybe, Bannon seemed to suggest, it was a rehearsal, meant to test how far the administration can stretch our tolerance for agents as part of the landscape of our daily lives without pushback.<\/p>\n If ICE\u2019s invasion of American cities as part of Trump\u2019s broad-based crackdown on immigration and dissent alike was a sledgehammer, what I experienced was more akin to a scalpel. It represents an agency that is understanding the criticisms against its methods and looking for new, more sophisticated ways to terrorize people. <\/p>\n If we can accept the reality that Trump\u2019s personal army is requiring more documentation from us just to board an Airbus, how long until we are forced to tolerate them in our voting booths and beyond?<\/p>\n Training Us to Terror<\/p>\n It was hard not to feel that surgical instillation of terror during my airport visit.<\/p>\n The heightened scrutiny of airport security already makes me feel like a criminal, one who doesn\u2019t even know he committed a crime. In the days leading up to my flight, I prepared for that same kind of interaction, amplified by the presence of someone with a gun and near-unlimited state power<\/a>. I knew I\u2019d have to get much closer to an ICE agent than I ever had before.<\/p>\n Instagram videos of JFK suggested lines might be long, but when we arrived on Thursday morning, the terminal was mostly empty and the estimated wait time in my reserve line was only about 15 minutes.<\/p>\n It ended up taking twice as long. As we got closer to the security checkpoint, I realized what the holdup was: A TSA agent was standing behind two ICE agents, training them on how to do her job. As she stood there \u2014\u00a0working without getting paid<\/a>, unlike the heavily armed agent sitting in front of her \u2014\u00a0she walked them through the steps.<\/p>\n I got a closer look at one of the ICE agents. He was white and bald, wearing military fatigues and a tactical vest<\/a> that announced his employment with ICE.<\/p>\n People in front of me walked through without incident, performing the usual routine: passport, boarding pass, then on to remove their belts and unsheathe their laptops.<\/p>\n When I stepped up to the podium, I wondered if I was about to interact with someone who would be suspicious of me merely for my name and skin color.<\/p>\n I let out an involuntary smile \u2014 perhaps as a subconscious signal that I am friendly and low-risk. The ICE agent asked for my passport, which I handed over, as usual, and waited while a machine took my picture. I anticipated moving on quickly.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when he asked me for another form of ID. At that moment, I started to feel my face turn hot, as if I were being accused of something. A U.S. passport is considered one of the most powerful forms of identification<\/a> in the world. Why did he need a second document?<\/p>\n We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. Join us. <\/p>\n Join Our Newsletter <\/p>\n Thank You For Joining! <\/p>\n \n Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. <\/p>\n Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?\n <\/p>\n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though I had already started to grab the wallet in my coat pocket, he followed up with, \u201cYou know, like a driver\u2019s license?\u201d I handed over the plastic driver\u2019s license \u2014 not a REAL ID, which is why I brought my passport \u2014 and waited for his verdict.<\/p>\n He looked back and forth between my documents and the monitor and then OKed me to walk forward.<\/p>\n My partner, who is white, walked through behind me without incident.<\/p>\n People with weapons will now ask more of me just to do the same thing I had done a few weeks before.<\/p>\n Later, as I was sitting in my seat toward the plane\u2019s rear, I began to gain a greater perspective on what I had just undergone. That interaction \u2014 the kind that I had worried about for a few hours before waking up and schlepping to the airport \u2014 was designed to happen to people like me. It represented a moment of friction, designed to jolt me at first, but then get me used to the fact that people with weapons will now ask more of me just to do the same thing I had done a few weeks before, when I flew to Puerto Rico without any ICE agents at the TSA checkpoint.<\/p>\n Free passage would be harder, the stakes of any interaction would be higher. The fear that I was feeling in that moment had been designed, as if in a lab, to train me to accept a violent overreach that would\u2019ve seemed absurd mere weeks ago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see how this creep might affect people \u2014 Latinos and other immigrants who have citizenship \u2014 at their polling places. It will bring a little terror. And then instill a little normalcy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Donald Trump deploying federal agents to TSA checkpoints, an ICE agent is seen at the John F.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1493,7585,8,1501,1494,9,1492,1498,1499,1500,3592,7587,7586,7,2648],"class_list":{"0":"post-10815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-article-type-article-post","9":"tag-day-saturday","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-language-english","12":"tag-medium","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-page-type-article","15":"tag-partner-factiva","16":"tag-partner-smart-news","17":"tag-partner-social-flow","18":"tag-subject-justice","19":"tag-subject-voices","20":"tag-time-09-00","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-wc-1000-1999"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116309447299777799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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