A confrontation over a ticket error at SFO last week led to a lengthy back-and-forth between ticket counter agents and a Bay Area father that culminated in a United Airlines employee telling the man "Maybe we should call on ICE on you."

The July 14 incident was captured in a now viral video, as KQED reports, when San Ramon business owner Julio Varela and his family were trying to fly out of SFO to Montreal. Varela, who is Mexican American and a naturalized citizen of the US, was accompanied by his wife and two daughters, and his wife had booked the tickets weeks earlier through United for a flight being operated by Air Canada.

The family knew that they would need to get to the airport early, as NBC Bay Area reports, due to an error his wife made in booking the ticket of one of his daughters, swapping her middle name and last name. But instead of resolving the issue quickly, Varela says they were shuttling back and forth between the Air Canada and United ticket counters for three hours while no one seemed to be able to fix the error.

Finally, with only minutes left before they needed to board their flight to Montreal, and as an Air Canada agent appeared close to fixing the issue, the woman in a United uniform reportedly came over.

"She walks over and says, 'What, you’re still here? We already told you we can't do this,' and she just starts complaining about it," Varela tells NBC Bay Area. "She said, 'I don’t care. That’s her problem. Take it up with her. I don’t care if you guys fly out today or not.'"

An upset Varela then reacted, as he recounts to KQED, "That is when I was like, 'Man, you’re so lazy, so rude.' And she was like, ‘Why are you calling me this?’ I go, ‘Yeah, what’s your name?’ That’s when I pulled out my phone."

The agent also pulled out her phone, and the two began recording each other. The agent can be heard saying, "Maybe we should call ICE on you," which upset Varela for obvious reasons. And she added, "Maybe you need to be, because you don’t act like a citizen. Get away."

The employee then tells Varela, who begins calling her racist, to get his phone out of her face, and he threatens to sue and to get her fired.

Varela said his 14-year-old daughter was beside him and crying throughout this incident.

"I am Mexican. I was born in Mexico. I am a U.S. citizen. I own my own business. I pay taxes. I employ people," Varela tells KQED. "For her, especially with what’s going on right now in America … to say that to a minority, especially a Hispanic person, I think it’s really, really hateful and it’s really racist."

United Airlines issued a statement saying only, "We’re looking into the interaction in this video, but don’t have anything additional to share at this time."

As the Chronicle notes, the employee has not been publicly identified, but the video shows her wearing a badge indicating she is a union steward with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents the airlines passenger-service workers.

Varela and his family managed to fly out that day after another employee resolved the ticketing issue, and he told NBC Bay Area as they were flying back from Montreal on Saturday that he remained concerned that they could be confronted by ICE when trying to return through SFO.

"I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I get back," he told the station.

He adds, speaking to KQED, that he hopes the woman gets fired over the incident, because you "can't normalize racism."

And, Varela says, "Every time I fly, I’m like, 'Are they going to let me in?' You could be an American citizen born here. It doesn’t matter."