A man says a United Airlines employee threatened to call ICE on him during a customer service dispute at San Francisco International Airport. According to The Nerd Stash, the incident was captured on video and shared on Reddit in the r/bayarea community. Since the clip picks up partway through, there’s no way to know what set things off in the first place.
Throughout the clip, the man repeatedly claims the employee had suggested calling ICE on him, though the footage itself never captures her saying it. He can be heard saying, “You could have called ICE on me,” before challenging her further: “Call ICE on me. I dare you to call ICE on me.”
He also repeatedly accuses her of racism, saying at different points, “You are racist as hell,” “You’re a racist,” and “United Airlines has a racist customer service lady.” Meanwhile, the employee can be heard telling him more than once to back away and to stop pointing his phone at her face.
The video doesn’t show how it started, or how she responded
Near the end of the clip, the man tells her, “You’re going to get fired… and I’m suing you tonight.” The employee’s response to that includes her saying, “I’ve been here trying to help you get that car,” suggesting the dispute may have involved some kind of transportation issue, though this isn’t clarified further. What isn’t shown anywhere in the footage is the employee actually making the ICE comment herself, and the original spark behind the confrontation remains a mystery.
SFO is currently in the middle of a six-month runway construction project that began in late March and isn’t expected to finish until October, which has led to widespread flight delays across the airport. Whether this specific dispute was related to those delays has not been confirmed. Many commenters acknowledged that the clip doesn’t capture what happened before recording began, and some were willing to give the employee the benefit of the doubt regarding who escalated the exchange first.
Even so, most agreed that any suggestion of calling ICE during a customer service dispute would cross a line regardless of who started it. One Reddit user wrote, “I don’t know what happened before the recording started, but she is about to be out of a job. You don’t go there.” Another added, “Wow, what a stupid thing to say, even if the customer sucks. Just threw away her job.”
Disputes that escalate into ICE-related accusations have drawn similar attention online before, including an incident involving an elderly driver who allegedly made a similar threat after a traffic collision. United Airlines said it is looking into the incident and stated that it expects customers to be treated well. The comment section was largely critical of the airline more broadly, with one person writing, “United Airlines in general sucks. They always seem to hire the most rude flight attendants.”
The identity of the employee has not been confirmed, and the circumstances leading up to the recorded portion of the exchange remain unclear.
Published: Jul 17, 2026 09:30 pm