ICE is arresting more people at Philadelphia International Airport, advocates say. Here’s what to know

Around 7 a.m. on July 11, Steven Melchiorre dropped off his girlfriend, Iliana Noeli Lick, at Philadelphia International Airport.

Lick, 30, an Argentine citizen and a South Philadelphia resident since September 2024, worked as a nanny for two families in the Point Breeze neighborhood. She was traveling with friends to Kansas City to watch her home country’s soccer team take on Switzerland in a FIFA World Cup match.

“Did you find your gate?” Melchiorre texted her when he got back home. When he didn’t get a response, he texted her again before falling back asleep: “Anyway, I love you. Have a safe flight.”

But Melchiorre awoke later to a barrage of phone calls informing him that Lick never made it to her boarding gate. She was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the airport’s security checkpoint. Lick entered the country in 2023 on a travel visa, Melchiorre said, and after extending the visa, she filed paperwork to change her status and obtain a work permit.

She is one of at least seven people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at Philadelphia International Airport since the second week of July, according to immigration advocacy groups.

Elena Emelchin Brunner, the immigration justice organizer at Asian Americans United, said the organization is aware of six people who have been detained at the airport since July 14. One of those people is a 74-year-old grandmother with a pending asylum case who is currently being held in Texas, Emelchin Brunner said. All of those people had initially entered the country on a visa and had applied for another status while in the U.S.

AAU started receiving reports of ICE arrests at the airport to its hotline a few weeks ago, Emelchin Brunner said.

“That seems like a pretty significant increase for us, considering that we haven’t heard of anybody detained at the airport before then,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that that necessarily hasn’t been happening. It just means that we haven’t heard about it.”

Philadelphia International Airport is one of at least 15 airports across the country that have seen an uptick in federal immigration enforcement arrests in recent weeks, per reporting from The New York Times.

“Unfortunately, I think this is a pattern that we’re seeing across the country,” Emelchin Brunner said. “It’s not just in Philadelphia, and so I think we’re trying to coordinate with other cities that are seeing an uptick in this, too, to try to figure out how to better protect our community members.”

A spokesperson for the Philadelphia ICE Field Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city’s Department of Aviation referred questions to Philadelphia police and the DHS.

Philadelphia police told WHYY News in a statement that it “cannot confirm or comment on any alleged arrests or daily staffing levels involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Philadelphia International Airport.”

“As a local entity, our department does not oversee, track, or maintain operational metrics for federal law enforcement agencies operating within federal jurisdiction,” the statement reads.

DHS said in a statement to WHYY News that the agency “reversed the horrendous Biden-era policy that allowed aliens in our country illegally to jet around our country.”

“Under President Trump, DHS will no longer tolerate this,” the statement reads. “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport.”

On Tuesday, immigrant rights advocates called on Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration to do more to enforce the six of seven “ICE Out” bills that went into effect on July 7.

Vivian Chang, executive director of Asian Americans United, cited airport detentions as a reason for the city to take further action.

“Literally, there was a 74-year-old Indonesian grandmother taken from the airport, and there is no response,” she said Tuesday. “Where is the interference from the city to make sure like that doesn’t happen again, or to make sure that she has protection?”

Philadelphia resident detained by ICE at airport ‘followed all the processes that she was told’

Lick was transferred from Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center to Cambria County Jail in Pennsylvania to detention centers in Louisiana and Texas. She is currently being held at Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, Melchiorre said, where she will have a bond hearing on Aug. 4.

Emelchin Brunner said four of the people who were detained at the airport that her organization is connected with are women, which is “striking,” she said, since most people being detained by ICE are men.

There are fewer holding spaces for women at detention centers, so women detainees are often sent farther away from their families, Emelchin Brunner said.

“For the majority of women, in particular, not just at the airport, but in the Philadelphia region, it’s very difficult to not only keep track of where they’re going,” she said. “They’re also typically being sent pretty far, comparative to men.”

She said her organization is working to support families of those detained and help them get legal support and pay for commissary funds “so families can stay connected, and so that people don’t lose their humanity or don’t become invisible within the system.”

Together with two families who employ Lick as a babysitter, as well as other community members and friends in Philadelphia and beyond, Melchiorre has raised more than $15,000 for Lick’s legal fees.

Britni Zahodnick and her husband, Zane Schultz, live in Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood and have employed Lick as a babysitter for their two young children, aged 4 and 1, for more than a year.

They found out about Lick’s detention from Melchiorre on July 11, when he showed up at their door asking for their help.

“Neither of us have family or parents in Philadelphia, so Iliana was really our main support system for our family,” Zahodnick said.

The couple has supported Melchiorre in the aftermath of Lick’s detention, and has also been able to message Lick through various detention centers’ communication apps to express their support.

Her detention has affected the whole family, Zahodnick and Schultz said, including their son, who often looks forward to the Friday afternoons he spends in Lick’s care during the school year.

Zahodnick said she explained to her son what happened to Lick, in part because he had already come home from school earlier this year “asking us about police taking people from their families.”

“It’s …  kind of upsetting that he already had a frame of reference for this, and it turned out to be, I guess, helpful in us explaining what happened,” she said.

Schultz said that as young parents, they felt like they “hit the jackpot” with Lick and she “became family very quickly.”

“It’s just sad through multiple lenses to have to watch him process this, maybe grow up a little bit quicker than he would have to otherwise,” he said of his son. “[It’s] just all around, kind of heartbreaking, and having to step up and think through … how do we now communicate this thing to a 4-year-old and help him understand?”

Melchiorre said there has been “incredible support” from community members.

He said he is “empathetic and totally aware of the immigration process.”

“I understand that ICE has a legal right to detain Iliana in the situation,” he said. “I’m not oblivious to that, and I also believe that people should kind of follow the … immigration rules. But I also see that the immigration process is very confusing. And Iliana entered the country in 2023 under a different president at the time, and that she followed all the processes that she was told and that she thought was right at the time.”

Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to note that Iliana Noeli Lick was traveling to Kansas City to watch Argentina play Switzerland in a FIFA World Cup match.