A United Airlines employee at San Francisco International Airport was caught on video threatening to call ICE on a Mexican American passenger during a heated ticketing dispute. The passenger was not blameless in the escalation, but as the dust settles, it appears the employee’s response was indefensible.
United Airlines Employee Threatens To Call ICE On Mexican American Passenger At SFO
I’ve held off a few days on addressing this issue, seeing if any additional facts would arise, but I do think this issue merits our discussion.
A ticketing problem at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) escalated into an ugly confrontation after a United Airlines employee told a Mexican American passenger, “Maybe we should call ICE on you,” adding that he did not “act like a citizen.”
The passenger, Julio Varela, is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who was traveling to Montreal with his wife and two daughters. According to Varela, the dispute began with a name error on his daughter’s ticket. His wife had accidentally entered the girl’s middle name in the last-name field when booking a United ticket for a flight operated by Air Canada.
Varela says the family spent roughly 15 hours on the phone with the two airlines before the trip trying to correct the problem, but arrived at SFO with it still unresolved.
After nearly three more hours of being sent between the United and Air Canada counters, Air Canada was reportedly able to rebook three of the four family members. It still needed United to change the daughter’s ticket status from “exchanged” to “open” before completing her reservation.
That is when the confrontation began.
Passenger Calls United Employee “Lazy,” Then She Invokes ICE
Varela says the United employee was dismissive of the family’s predicament and indicated she did not care whether they traveled that day.
He then called her “lazy” and “rude” and repeatedly demanded her name while recording her.
In the video, the employee refuses to provide her name, tells Varela to move away, and begins recording him with her own phone. After she returns from a back room, she can be heard saying:
“Maybe we should call ICE on you.”
When Varela asks her to repeat herself, she responds:
“Maybe you need to be, because you don’t act like a citizen. Get away.”
Varela then becomes visibly and audibly furious, challenges her to call ICE, accuses her of racism, and says she will lose her job.
Toward the end of the encounter, the employee walks out from behind the counter and reaches toward his phone. Varela alleges that she shoved his hand (FWIW, it doesn’t seem like that to me), causing the recording to stop. His 14-year-old daughter was reportedly standing nearby and crying.
Another United employee ultimately intervened and helped the family make the flight. I don’t know if the Untied employee was lazy, but she certainly appears incompetent….
United has offered only a brief statement:
“We’re looking into the interaction in this video, but don’t have anything additional to share at this time.”
The employee is a United gate agent, represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union.
The IAM issued a statement as well:
“We are aware of a video being circulated online, but we have no verification of its authenticity or the full context. As depicted, the comments made in the video do not reflect the views or values of the IAM Union. Any potential matters arising from this incident will be handled through the appropriate processes established by the collective bargaining agreement.”
Translation: don’t expect any updates on this one…note that the United employee is wearing an “IAM Steward” badge, suggesting she holds a union leadership position.
You Do Not Answer One Trope With Another
I certainly acknowledge that Varela was angry and confrontational.
Calling an employee lazy, repeatedly demanding her name, following the interaction with a camera, and raising his voice did nothing to defuse the situation. Even Varela has acknowledged that he lost his temper and could have handled portions of the encounter differently.
I would still like to hear the employee’s full account. Short videos rarely show every relevant moment, and customer-service employees routinely endure abuse that never makes it onto social media.
But nothing we have seen justifies what she said.
You do not answer one ugly trope with another.
Even if she believed Varela was invoking a racial stereotype by calling a black employee lazy, responding by threatening to call ICE on a Mexican man is not a clever comeback. It is another racial trope, and a particularly reckless one in the current environment.
There was no immigration issue here. Varela was a ticketed passenger attempting to resolve a reservation problem. His citizenship was irrelevant to the transaction, and telling him that he did not “act like a citizen” was both nonsensical and needlessly inflammatory.
A United Uniform Requires Better Judgment
The larger problem is that the employee was wearing a United Airlines uniform and working in a customer-facing role.
Airline employees do not have to tolerate verbal abuse. They may end an interaction, summon a supervisor, direct a passenger to leave the counter, or even call airport police if they feel threatened.
But invoking ICE based on someone’s apparent ethnicity shows a stunning lack of common sense.
She did not de-escalate the confrontation…she poured gasoline on it.
Whatever Varela said before the recording began, a seasoned customer-service employee should understand that threatening immigration enforcement against a Hispanic customer is going to transform an ordinary service dispute into a national controversy.
That does not necessarily mean she should be fired. I am not eager to demand someone lose her livelihood based on a partial video without hearing her side or reviewing the complete record. But based on the conduct we can see, it may be best if she is no longer placed in a customer-facing position.
An airline representative must be able to maintain professional boundaries under pressure. If an employee cannot do that without resorting to racial provocation, there are other roles that do not involve direct interaction with passengers.
Was The United Employee Suspended?
There are reports circulating online that the employee was suspended pending an investigation.
Varela told KQED that he heard through a personal connection at United that she had been suspended. A Reddit commenter who claimed to work at SFO made the same assertion.
But United has not confirmed her suspension or disclosed her current employment status.
Therefore, it would be premature to state as fact that she has been suspended, fired, or otherwise disciplined. At this point, the only confirmed position from United is that the airline is investigating the interaction.
CONCLUSION
The passenger escalated this confrontation by insulting the employee, raising his voice, and repeatedly pressing her for her name. But the United employee crossed a far more serious line when she threatened to call ICE on a Mexican American customer and told him he did not act like a citizen.
I would like to hear her side, but the words captured on video were reckless, unprofessional, and wholly incompatible with a customer-facing role at United Airlines.
i am actually embarassed by my US citizenship,
so not sure why it is insulting to say they dont look american
wow. just wow.
There are certainly Americans who have no cross-cultural skills but this is stunning coming from a customer-facing airline employee.
thankfully, there are far more that “get it” than don’t.
Yet had that been a Delta employee I am sure you would have defended it. That’s exactly why you are the laughing stock of every mileage blog in existence.
absolutely no.
You are your own worst enemy creating someone that doesn’t exist in real life.
Accept real criticism where it is due
This isn’t close to being reflective of UA but she did have a UA name tag on and apparenlty quite the reputation
Yeah, even worse than the name-tag was the big United button on the back of her phone, which the video taken by the passenger really empathized. It was glaring. Whatever company is displayed during a bad encounter like this isn’t a great look. But, then again, is all PR good PR in this messed up attention economy world? Huh.
The KQED story has video from after the ‘hand push’ where another United supervisor talks to him trying to de-escalate, saying he isn’t being compliant. At the end of it, the agent on the white airport phone in the other videos gets off the phone, walks over and says they got the ticket sorted. Which is how they were able to make the flight.
Your first video has more of the upfront interaction than I’ve seen. The agent with the cell phone makes it clear she tried to help, so it wasn’t a flat out dismissal. What we don’t see is the discussion she had with Air Canada and what prompted him to call her lazy.
Of course the bigger question is why this even needed to be sorted at the airport, and why two alliance partners couldn’t resolve this quickly over the phone.
“I’ve held off a few days on addressing this issue…” Yeah, I mean, Ben and Gary covered it 4 days ago, but you were traveling to/in India, so… let’s gather everyone and re-hash all the same arguments with no new information! Yippie!
Kidding. Matt, you added some healthy nuance, here. Of course, the individual agent’s misbehavior was indefensible. I agree with you that an incident like this is going to receive calls for immediate termination from the commentariat (as it did.) Likewise, some are going to commandeer the conversation to claim all-unions-bad (that’d be another farce.)
And yet, due process is important (and the internal review is likely gonna be hush-hush); removing this agent from customer-facing responsibilities seems reasonable, at a minimum. (Watch as she’s just moved to a new jurisdiction, like the ‘few bad apples’ in police departments…)
You’re also wise to include the context of the passenger partially provoking the agent (no one likes to be called ‘lazy’ do they?) Yes, the trope-to-trope tit for tat retaliatory-escalatory cycle is very ‘online comments section,’ but usually often IRL. Hey now, let’s all keep speculating wildly, until the next performative outrage opportunity arises!
Click. Click. Click.
Thank you for your service. *salute*
Dude, you are becoming a bit of a douche with your blanketing every single site in the miles blogosphere. You and Gunturk and Tim Dunn should consider a joint venture in a firm called, “Get A Life.”
Would you prefer I use multiple aliases, like some others apparently do? Or, can you recognize that you, too, can engage as much or as little as you wish. ‘There ain’t no rule that says a 1990 can’t comment indefinitely.’
It’s been reported somewhere that AC ground agent had to walk with the family over to the UA counter to help, which means there was a justification that the UA ground agent was “lazy”.
Also, it was a UA ticket flying on AC, so it wasn’t like the UA agent could ban them from flying that day, and canceling the ticket would be beyond logistics and regulatory reasonings.
In all fairness, agents should be allowed to show their video online as well but I guess that would only get one or all of them in even more hot water. I am not defending her, I am a retired counter/gate agent and there is a fair share of angry, unreasonable, demanding customers. I get it that he was probably very frustrated about the daughters WRONG NAME on the ticket of which her mother was to blame.
That being said, the first thing that UA agent should have done was look at the issuing carrier in the computer record. Having seen it was United (016), you pick up the phone, call the ticketing department and try to get the ticket re-issued with the right name. There is always a way to correct it and even if an extra fee was involved then that is when you would explain to the customer the way to get the fee returned (albeit after the fact, after the flights). As mad as some passengers can make us, I have always deferred to a lead or supervisor, never would I have jeopardized my job because of some hothead yelling in my face.
With the hope that better communication and courtesy will prevail on our planet…
Amen
“KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON!” – As some of you may recall, originally a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 to keep spirits high during World War II, this timeless mantra reminds us to stay grounded and keep moving forward when things get a bit overwhelming.