Sen. Adam Schiff says travelers at San Francisco International Airport are being held past policy limits and cut off from family and lawyers, including lawful U.S. residents.
U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff toured an immigration holding facility at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday and left with a sharp complaint about how long some travelers stay locked in the system.
The California Democrat said some people flagged on return from international travel are kept longer than the rules allow, and without a chance to reach family or legal counsel in a reasonable time. NBC Bay Area reported his account of the visit and the problems he described.
Schiff pointed the finger at the Department of Homeland Security. He said DHS has been using a holding area to detain immigrants past the 72 hours allowed when Customs and Border Protection flags them coming back into the country.
He did not stop at illegal border crossers. Schiff said some of those stuck in the holding process are lawful U.S. residents who get trapped in the same pipeline.
That claim matters. A system built to screen arrivals is supposed to separate real enforcement targets from people who already have legal status. When lawful residents cannot call home or reach a lawyer for extended stretches, the process is not doing its basic job.
Schiff said the same pattern is showing up in Southern California, not only at SFO. He offered no public roster of cases, no named detainees, and no count of how many travelers were held or for how many extra hours. The concerns rest on what he said he found on the tour.
The figure Schiff used was plain: 72 hours. That is the window he said is allowed for these holds when CBP flags a traveler after international travel. Beyond that, he argued, the detention runs past policy.
He also objected to the communication blackout. Family contact and access to legal counsel, in his telling, are not arriving inside a reasonable timeframe for some of the people inside the SFO facility.
No formal policy memo, statute cite, or facility charter appears in the available local reporting on the visit. No on-the-record reply from DHS or CBP is included in that account either. What stands is a sitting senator’s description of a holding area, a time limit he says is being broken, and travelers, including lawful residents, who cannot get word out.
Airport immigration holds are not abstract. They sit at the point where ordinary international travel meets federal screening. CBP’s role is to flag risk. DHS’s role is to manage what comes next. If holds routinely stretch past the stated window and cut off counsel, lawful travelers pay for bureaucratic drag that has nothing to do with tough enforcement.
Secure borders and lawful immigration both require a system that works. That means stopping people who have no right to enter or remain. It also means moving lawful residents through screening without parking them past the clock and silencing their calls home.
Schiff’s tour does not, by itself, prove how widespread the problem is. It does put a concrete facility, a concrete airport, and a concrete time limit on the record from a member of Congress who walked the floor. SFO is a major international gateway. Southern California, in his account, is seeing the same trouble.
Taxpayers fund these agencies to enforce the law with competence. Holding areas that overrun their own 72-hour mark and block contact with family or counsel fail that test, especially when lawful U.S. residents are the ones left waiting.
Order at the border and fairness for people who followed the rules are not opposite goals. A machine that confuses the two is not protecting the country. It is advertising that the process is broken.
