United Airlines investigates employee accused of ICE threat at San Francisco airport

A United Airlines employee appeared to threaten to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a passenger during a ticketing dispute at San Francisco International Airport, a confrontation captured on video July 14. The passenger, Julio Varela of San Ramon, said he was trying to correct a ticketing error for his daughter before a family trip to Montreal, Canada.

Varela said he was offended and shocked by the employee’s comments. In accounts of the exchange, the worker allegedly said, “Maybe we should call ICE on you” and told him, “You don’t act like a citizen,” language that turned a routine counter dispute into a confrontation over immigration status and travel anxiety.

The video left Varela and his family worried about whether they could be detained by ICE when they returned from Canada. Varela also said neither San Francisco International Airport nor United Airlines had contacted his family to reassure them they would not be detained.

United Airlines said it was investigating the incident. The company’s review now sits at the center of a broader question raised by the video: whether a frontline employee used the threat of immigration enforcement as leverage in an ordinary customer dispute, and what policies, training and discipline United has in place when that happens at a busy airport counter.

The episode spread quickly across local and national media within days, with coverage from NBC Bay Area, NBC News, ABC7 News Bay Area, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Standard, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and CBS News. At the San Francisco counter where the dispute unfolded, the images have become a test of how airlines handle conflict without turning immigration authorities into a weapon in a service complaint.