President Trump said he is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports as some air travelers face longer security lines due to the partial government shutdown.
“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job,” Trump posted on social media Sunday.
Trump then blamed Democrats for the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has entered its sixth week and paused paychecks for Transportation Security Administration workers. The White House has said more than 300 TSA officers have quit, while others aren’t showing up to work, causing significant delays at airports nationwide.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., threw blame back at Trump and criticized the planned ICE deployment.
“The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them,” Jeffries said on CNN.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, “is in charge” of the ICE deployment, Trump said. TSA and ICE are both part of DHS.
But it remains unclear how the operation will work at airports.
“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said on CNN Sunday. “But we will be at airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along.”
Unclear duties for ICE agents
Homan said he is talking with the heads of ICE and TSA to finalize a plan, but said he expects ICE agents to relieve TSA agents of guard duty at some terminal entries and exits.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that,” Homan said. “There are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs, help move those lines.”
But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to have a different idea of what ICE agents could do at airports.
“They know how to run the X-ray machines because they are again under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy told ABC Sunday.
Duffy then warned that wait times at airports would get much worse if Congress doesn’t fund DHS by the end of next week, when TSA workers are set to miss another paycheck.
“I think you’re going to see more TSA agents — as we come to Thursday, Friday, Saturday of next week — they’re going to quit or they’re not going to show up,” Duffy said.
Scant negotiations progress
Last week, Congress failed to advance a DHS funding bill for the fifth time, leaving TSA, FEMA and other agencies in the lurch. ICE, on the other hand, still has plenty of funding after Congress allocated the the agency billions of dollars last summer as part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The DHS shutdown started following the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minnesota. The killings sparked demands from Democrats to change ICE policy: a judicial warrant requirement, and a ban on ICE agents wearing masks, among other proposed changes.
It was not immediately clear whether ICE agents deployed to airports would wear masks, as many of them do during immigration enforcement.
Homan said he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week to discuss DHS funding, but he gave no indication that a deal was nearing.
“More conversations need to be had because we certainly can’t surrender ICE’s authorities and their congressionally mandated job,” Homan said Sunday.
As for the ICE operation at airports, Homan said agents will continue to enforce immigration laws as they deploy to terminals and security lines.
