ICE arrests at Philadelphia International evoke time when airport police helped military catch AWOL Vietnam War soldiers in 1960s

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ICE increased its presence at more than a dozen U.S. airports in 2026, including Philadelphia International Airport. Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images

ICE ramped up its arrests of immigrants at major airports over the summer of 2026, including in Philadelphia, to help meet the Trump administration’s reported goal of apprehending 1,100 people daily.

The agency is collaborating with the Transportation Security Administration, its sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security. However, decades before TSA existed, local police were used in a similar fashion to help the military catch AWOL Vietnam War soldiers.

I’m a historian of race and policing in Philadelphia after the Civil Rights Movement and I spend a lot of time digging through the city’s archives. I recently combed through a 1967 collection of police incident reports from the 77th district, also known as the airport police, which patrols Philadelphia International Airport.

Most of the cases involved plane crashes and unruly passengers, rental car thefts, larceny of luggage and freight packages, bomb scares and drug smuggling.

But the airport police at times detained drafted soldiers who didn’t want to complete their tours of duty.

A 1972 photo shows graffiti sprayed on a U.S. Army billboard at 34th and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia. The Greek letter omega sprayed on the man’s T-shirt was a symbol of a group of draft resisters. Courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. Philadelphia, Pa.

A site of civil disobedience

The Vietnam War was unpopular because the goals of America’s fight against communism were unclear and village massacres like My Lai exposed it as unjust.

Approximately 80% of American soldiers drafted were working-class men. The odds of facing injury, amputation, post-traumatic stress disorder and death in this war were higher than that of World War II and the Korean War.

Nearly 60,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives during the Vietnam War. The death toll was at its highest between 1967 and 1969, when at least 11,000 U.S. troops died each year.

One in five Pennsylvanians who died in the war were from Philadelphia. Edison High School in North Philadelphia had the greatest number of high school students killed in Vietnam nationwide: 64.

In 1967, Philadelphia’s local police functioned as the federal government’s eyes and ears to report anti-war behavior at the airport.

That February, and questioned Fred Batchelder, the president of Ridley Park’s Veterans for Peace in Vietnam, for distributing anti-war pamphlets to servicemen without getting authorization from the Division of Aviation. The pamphlets aimed to bust myths about the war and were written by Green Beret Master Sgt. Donald Duncan, an early critic of the war.

Four hours later, Batchelder was released and permitted to distribute pamphlets outside the terminal and in the baggage room. But to Philadelphia’s Civil Disobedience Squad and the FBI so those agencies could further investigate him.

The police record of Fred Batchelder’s detention for distributing anti-war pamphlets at Philadelphia’s airport in 1967. Menika Dirkson/Philadelphia City Archives

Escapes from military custody

As Batchelder protested with literature, AWOL soldiers took advantage of the airport’s busy environment to escape from the military police.

The same month that Batchelder was detained, serviceman D. Green, a sailor already under disciplinary action who was being escorted to his ship in San Diego, ran through the main terminal while a shore patrolman from the Navy Yard pursued him.

Airport police joined the chase that led to an undeveloped section of highway nearby. Both law enforcement agencies hailed taxis to follow Green until he was eventually caught, handcuffed and detained.

A few weeks later, Pvt. T.J. Kee escaped the custody of military police escorting him to Baltimore. Once Kee fled from the Delta Airlines ticket counter, Philadelphia and Tinicum township police were alerted to patrol the airport and the surrounding area, but Kee got away. He enjoyed nearly five months of freedom until Delaware state police caught him in Wilmington.

Soldiers in distress

Servicemen also used medical emergencies to avoid active duty.

In May 1967, Navy officer P. Nahmens fell ill in the baggage claim area of Philadelphia’s airport and asked police to take him to the Naval Hospital. Nahmens complained that for two months he had severe chest pains and an upset stomach before his return to duty aboard the USS Newman K. Perry in Newport, Rhode Island.

Nahmens also said that he did not want to report to his superiors, which I believe made the police suspicious because they used the uncommon classification, “ill sailor” in their files to document the incident.

That same month, Pvt. Wishler had a seizure in the airport’s baggage room after he arrived from Phoenix on a TWA flight. Wishler was scheduled to report to Fort Dix in New Jersey within seven hours of landing in Philadelphia. Airport police attended to him, but it appears from their report that they weren’t fully convinced he was actually unconscious and having convulsions.

Skycap Ben Austin, who assisted passengers with picking up their luggage, reported the emergency and another soldier told the police he witnessed Wishler shaking and saw saliva dripping from his mouth. However, after Officer R.A. D'Ambrosio saw Wishler, he stated in his signed incident report that the serviceman only “appeared” to be unconscious and convulsing.

Wishler was transported to the Naval Hospital, and the police later called the hospital to investigate his medical condition. They closed the case after they learned Wishler had fractured his skull in a prior accident that made him prone to seizures.

Dying by suicide was another option servicemen considered.

In July 1967, Army Officer J. Fries told his sergeant that he was “afraid to go to Viet Nam and was going to end it all.” He later survived an overdose of aspirin in a Philadelphia airport restroom. Airport attendant Marie Jones found the unconscious soldier and informed the police, who later transported him to the Naval Hospital for a stomach pump.

A young demonstrator with a ‘Peace in Vietnam’ button attends an anti-Vietnam War protest march in Philadelphia in July 1968.…