Airlines Will Stop Selling Passenger Data to ICE (EXCLUSIVE)
Airline Reporting Corp., which captured billions in ticket transactions and allowed warrantless searches by U.S. agencies, will shut down by year’s end after mounting scrutiny from Congress.
WASHINGTON — Airlines Reporting Corporation has terminated its controversial Travel Intelligence Program that sold hundreds of millions of passenger travel records to federal agencies without warrant requirements, following revelations that the IRS conducted warrantless searches of Americans’ flight data.
In an email obtained by Migrant Insider, ARC President and CEO Lauri Reishus notified Congressional Hispanic Caucus staff Friday that “the small number of government TIP customers have been notified that the program is ending this year.”
“This is what we do. This is how we’re fighting back,” said Hispanic Caucus chairman Adriano Espaillat at a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Capitol, celebrating the win. “I would encourage other industry groups in the private sector to follow suit. They should not be in cahoots with ICE, especially in ways we may consider illegal,” he added.
The shutdown comes days after a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to nine major airlines demanding they exercise their authority as co-owners of ARC to terminate the data-selling operation.
The November 18 letter—signed by Senator Ron Wyden, Congressman Andy Biggs, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat, and Senator Cynthia Lummis—revealed the IRS accessed the database without conducting a legally required review to determine whether purchasing Americans’ travel data requires a warrant.
The Scale of Surveillance
ARC’s Travel Intelligence Program maintained a searchable database of approximately 722 million ticket transactions spanning 39 months of past and future travel data. The system allowed government agencies to search by passenger name, credit card number, airline, and other identifiers—all without obtaining warrants, court orders, or subpoenas.
The database captured roughly 50 percent of all U.S. airline tickets, specifically those booked through travel agencies, online booking platforms like Expedia, Kayak, and Priceline, and credit card rewards programs. Information flowed to ARC from more than 12,800 travel agencies whenever customers made bookings, according to Freedom of Information Act records.
Federal agencies including the FBI, Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, ATF, SEC, TSA, State Department, and ICE purchased access to the system. Because the data was sold commercially rather than obtained through legal process, agencies bypassed Fourth Amendment warrant requirements.
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The IRS Disclosure
The lawmakers’ letter detailed specific admissions from the IRS that the agency “did not follow federal law and its own policies in purchasing airline data from ARC” and “confirmed that it did not conduct a legal review to determine if the purchase of Americans’ travel data requires a warrant.”
This disclosure represented the clearest documented example of how agencies exploited the commercial sale of travel data to circumvent constitutional privacy protections.
Corporate Structure and Accountability
ARC operates as a conduit between airlines and travel agencies, processing booking information whenever passengers purchase tickets through third-party agencies. The corporation is co-owned by United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska, Lufthansa, Air France, and Air Canada, with each airline holding a seat on ARC’s board of directors.
The lawmakers’ letter placed direct responsibility on these airlines for the surveillance program: “Regardless of whether you approved this practice, or simply failed to stop it, you are directly responsible for this outrageous violation of your customers’ privacy.”
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Privacy and Antitrust Concerns
The program created a two-tiered privacy system where passengers who booked directly with airlines retained Fourth Amendment protections—agencies needed subpoenas or court orders for those records—while passengers using travel agencies, booking sites, or credit card points had no such safeguards.
The letter noted this arrangement also raised antitrust concerns, since direct bookings are the most profitable method for airlines. “Americans who buy their airplane tickets through third party travel agencies, including by redeeming credit card points through a credit card travel portal, deserve the same privacy protections as tickets booked directly through the airlines,” the lawmakers wrote.
Program Origins and Justification
ARC established the Travel Intelligence Program following the September 11 attacks. An ARC spokesperson previously stated TIP “has likely contributed to the prevention and apprehension of criminals involved in human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, sex trafficking, national security threats, terrorism and other imminent threats of harm to the United States.”
Next Steps
In her email to Congressional Hispanic Caucus staff, CHC members requested a meeting with Reihaus this week to discuss the program’s termination. The lawmakers’ letter had urged ARC to “adopt a policy of only turning over Americans’ travel records to the government when legally compelled to do so, except in emergencies.”
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Good Job Hispanic Caucus 💪🏼🇺🇸 I’m sorry to say this is the first I heard of this warrantless, enabling disclosure.
Nice work! I didn't even know they were doing this.