The Disney Magic cruise ship was among eight vessels boarded as part of an ongoing Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSAM) enforcement operation. Photo courtesy of Disney Cruise Line.
Liberals and the mainstream media were wrong. The Disney raid was not about hate for immigrants or brown people. It was about child pornography.
Between April 23 and 27, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) boarded eight cruise ships at the Port of San Diego Cruise Ship Terminal as part of an ongoing Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSAM) enforcement operation.
On April 28, HSI San Diego arrested 23 crew members from multiple ships under Operation Tidal Wave, acting on intelligence from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Electronic service providers, platforms such as WhatsApp, Google, and iCloud, are legally required to report detected CSAM to NCMEC, which routes tips to HSI for investigation.
The process is automated and mandatory, initiated by algorithmic detection rather than any administration policy. Of the 28 people detained, CBP confirmed 27 were involved in the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSAM, 26 Filipino nationals, one Portuguese, and one Indonesian. Ten were workers on the Disney Magic.
The Disney Magic is registered in the Bahamas, as are the majority of major cruise ships. Because it flies a foreign flag, U.S. labor laws do not apply, and the crew held C1/D crewmember visas rather than standard U.S. work permits. Foreign registry does not, however, create immunity from U.S. federal criminal law.
CBP retains full authority to board vessels entering U.S. ports, and CSAM possession and distribution are federal crimes regardless of where a ship is flagged. Following confirmed CSAM findings, CBP cancelled the visas of all 27 and returned them to their countries of citizenship. Disney stated it has a zero-tolerance policy, cooperated fully with law enforcement, and terminated the employees involved.
Media framing made it appear that ICE raided a Disney ship for no good reason and arrested the crew “in front of children” and “stunned passengers “simply for being foreign. The only reason given in these posts was that President Trump hates brown people, ignoring the fact that the people arrested were not necessarily brown. Bored Panda ran reader commentary stating: “Let’s remember that this is the Trump administration making claims about brown foreign workers.”
The New Republic headlined the story, “ICE Abducts Disney Staff Right Off of Cruise Ship in Sickening Raid,” and opened with the claim that “Immigration and Customs Enforcement is making life a nightmare for its workers.” This was wrong on two counts: the agencies involved were CBP and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), not ICE, and the operation targeted child exploitation, not immigration status. KPBS amplified activist Benjamin Prado of Unión del Barrio, who framed the arrests as “a larger pattern of aggressive raids and immigration detention at work sites.”
Even media outlets considered more mainstream misrepresented the operation. Headlines included SFGate’s “Disney Cruise Line Raid in Calif. Leaves Philippine Consulate Concerned,” NBC 7 San Diego’s “Disney Cruise Ship Passenger Says ICE Detained Her Waiter Upon Disembarking,” and the California Post’s “ICE Agents Storm Disney Cruise Docking in California and Arrest Multiple Staff in Front of Stunned Passengers.” KPBS also amplified activists who claimed immigration agents had arrested cruise workers in San Diego.
The workers were not undocumented migrants targeted because of their immigration status. They entered the United States legally on valid C1/D crew visas, which were revoked following confirmed involvement with CSAM offenses.
Operation Tidal Wave was not the first of its kind. In September 2025, CBP removed four Carnival Cruise Line crew members from a ship in Baltimore on the same basis, CSAM possession.
Liberals hate ICE and vilify DHS. However, these agencies are instrumental in reducing child exploitation and human trafficking. Child sexual exploitation is the second largest crime category investigated by HSI, behind narcotics trafficking. Each year, HSI opens more than 6,000 new investigative cases. In FY 2025, HSI identified or rescued more than 1,400 child victims and arrested over 4,800 individuals for child-sexual-exploitation crimes.
President Trump’s securing of the southern border is one of the most impactful actions to date. An estimated 72% of trafficking victims in the United States are foreign nationals, including both legal and illegal immigrants. Most of them are women and girls trafficked for sex or forced labor.
Through November 2025, Border Patrol apprehended just under 5,700 unaccompanied children at the Southwest border, on track for roughly 6,840 for the year, compared to nearly 100,000 in FY 2024 and more than 131,500 in FY 2022. From October 2020 to September 2024, HHS processed 468,736 unaccompanied migrant children; from October 2024 to June 2025 that number fell to 21,399. Unlike standard law enforcement metrics, a declining apprehension number at the border is a positive indicator — it means fewer children attempted the crossing and were therefore exposed to smugglers, trafficking networks, and the unvetted sponsor pipeline where so many were subsequently exploited.
In February 2025, DHS launched a national child-welfare initiative to locate children released to unvetted sponsors during the prior surge. The effort uncovered sponsors in possession of CSAM, minors trapped in forced labor, and girls who had become pregnant with children fathered by their sponsors.
The Biden administration had ignored a backlog of more than 65,000 reports regarding unaccompanied children, including over 7,300 human-trafficking reports. As of July 2025, more than 59,000 of those reports had been processed, generating over 4,000 investigative leads.
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