A United Airlines employee threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on a US-Mexican traveler in a viral rant.
The unidentified employee could be seen holding up her phone as 54-year-old Julio Varela filmed her on June 14.
‘Maybe we should call ICE on you,’ the woman said in a video.
‘Oh! Say that again,’ Varela said in shock.
‘You need to leave, because you don’t act like a citizen,’ she said as she paced behind the desk. ‘Get away!’
‘Call ICE on me, lady! Call ICE on me,’ Varela demanded.
The father called the worker a ‘racist’ and said she would get fired for the remark.
The two went back and forth before Varela started yelling loud enough for other passengers to hear that the woman was ‘racist’ and ‘lazy.’ She continued to demand that he leave.
An unidentified United Airlines employee threatened to call ICE on an US-Mexican traveler after his tickets got mistakenly canceled
‘You need to leave, because you don’t act like a citizen,’ she said as she paced behind the desk. ‘Get away!’
Varela had approached the desk to fix an error with his ticket. Their exchange became heated after an hour when he was informed he and his family’s tickets had been purged from the system, he told The San Francisco Chronicle.
When the woman threatened to call ICE, the father said he believed her.
‘I take that threat very, very seriously. For somebody to threaten a Hispanic with ICE is a power trip,’ he told The Chronicle. ‘For a person of color to use that against me is jaw-dropping.’
Police were not called during the exchange, which was the second time Varela had approached the desk for help.
The ticketing problem began when Varela accidentally put their daughter’s middle name as her last name on her ticket.
They bought the ticket through United, but a partner airline was flying. Neither United nor Air Canada was able to fix the issue and kept shuttling the family between ticket counters when they arrived at the airport.
Due to the last name not being fixed, United reportedly canceled the family’s flights, which they didn’t realize until they arrived at the airport.
‘We spent no less than 15-20 hours on the phone trying to get the name changed,’ he said.
United is looking into the incident. Valera said his tickets were canceled after they mistaken put their daughter’s middle name as her last and United was unable to change it
After another United employee got involved, the family was able to get reissued flights to Montreal, where Varela’s wife is attending a pharmaceutical conference.
United told The Chronicle is still looking into the issue. It is unclear if the woman is still employed by the company.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Varela and United for comment.
