After a Tuesday oversight visit, Senator Adam Schiff said some people held by Customs and Border Protection at San Francisco International Airport are kept past the agency’s 72-hour guideline, and that detainees, including green-card holders, cannot call family or lawyers themselves.
By Staff Reporter
Senator Adam Schiff of California toured a Customs and Border Protection holding area at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday and said afterward that people detained there are still unable to telephone relatives or lawyers on their own, and that some are being held longer than federal policy generally allows.
The visit, which Mr. Schiff described in a post on X as an effort “to get answers on the conditions in which people are held, access to family, medicine and counsel, and more,” makes him at least the third Democratic member of California’s congressional delegation to inspect the room this year. It adds to a growing record of congressional oversight at a facility that has become one of the Bay Area’s most direct points of contact with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
What the senator described
The room, which airport officials call the “in-transit lounge,” is a 3,000-square-foot windowless space in the International Terminal. According to an account of the visit by The San Francisco Standard, Mr. Schiff said the room was renovated in July and now has a shower, reclining chairs, couches large enough to sleep on and a separate curtained area for families, and that the lights can be dimmed but not fully turned off.
Even so, he said it was “still not appropriate for long-term detention.” His most pressing concern, he said, is that detainees cannot place calls themselves. CBP officials told him they offer to call a relative on a detainee’s behalf, the Standard reported, and that detainees are eventually given a list of legal-aid groups.
“It’s not meaningful to get a list of attorneys if you can’t call them,” Mr. Schiff said, according to the Standard. He questioned what happens when no one answers, “or they leave a message, and people are afraid to return the call because they’re being asked to call Customs and Border Patrol.”
He said he was especially troubled that lawful permanent residents are among those held, people who he said can be unable to “reach their family for hours or days, and they’re sort of just at the whim of what CBP is doing — and they have no recourse.” NBC Bay Area reported that Mr. Schiff said the Department of Homeland Security has held people flagged by CBP on their return from international travel for longer than 72 hours, and that the same thing is happening in Southern California.
Mr. Schiff said one person was being held at the time of his visit, according to the Standard. He did not publicly identify detainees or release a count of how many people had been held past 72 hours.
CBP did not respond to the Standard’s request for comment. The Inquirer was unable to find a public response from the agency to Mr. Schiff’s remarks as of early Wednesday.
The 72-hour standard
The figure at the center of the dispute comes from CBP’s own rules. The agency’s National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search, issued in 2015, state that “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilities,” and that “every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing.” The standards also say reasonable efforts will be made to provide showers to detainees “who are approaching 72 hours in detention.”
The word “generally” gives the agency latitude, and the Department of Homeland Security has defended the length of some airport holds. In a statement to KQED this month, a department spokesperson said, “Certain travelers may require additional processing based on the circumstances of their case. The length and nature of that processing can vary depending on a number of factors, including necessary records, coordination with other government agencies and transportation or travel logistics.”
A pattern of oversight visits
The room drew wider attention after a San Francisco Chronicle investigation, cited by both KQED and the Standard, found that more than two dozen people had been held there for days at a time this year, most of them green-card holders with past arrests, and that many were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. KQED, citing the Chronicle, reported that SFO had the second-highest number of such airport detentions resulting in ICE transfers, after Miami.
Representative Kevin Mullin, whose San Mateo County district includes the airport, was initially turned away when he tried to visit in August, the Standard reported. On Oct. 1, Senator Alex Padilla made an unannounced oversight visit, saying in a statement that there were “extremely concerning reports that valid green card holders and other immigrants are being detained at SFO for days on end without access to adequate medical care or legal representation.”
Mr. Padilla told KQED that “less than half a dozen” people were held on the day of his visit and that the room “wasn’t bursting at the seams.” He said ICE sometimes brings detained immigrants to SFO and turns them over to CBP to be placed on departing flights, and that the frequency of those flights, which can run daily or only once or twice a week depending on the destination, helps explain how long people stay. In September, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution asking California’s congressional delegation to conduct regular oversight visits to the room, according to the Standard.
What it means for California
SFO is Northern California’s busiest international gateway, and most of the people held in the room this year have been green-card holders, according to the Chronicle’s findings as described by the Standard. For their families, the practical issue Mr. Schiff raised, whether a detained traveler can make a phone call, can determine whether a lawyer is able to intervene before a transfer to ICE custody or a removal flight.
Congressional Democrats have little power to compel changes while Republicans control both chambers. Mr. Padilla told KQED that if Democrats win a majority on Nov. 3, “you better believe we’re going to be holding hearings to further expose and hold this administration accountable.” Until then, the senators’ leverage rests largely on the right of members of Congress to make unannounced visits to detention facilities, and on the public record those visits create.
