A TSA officer directs long lines of travelers at a securty checkpoint at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston last week.David J. Phillip/AP
Surprise! Just one day before Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are supposed to be deployed to airports around the country to help reduce long lines caused by the partial government shutdown and spring break crowds, the Trump administration appears to have no coherent plan for what they will do.
Following Donald Trump’s announcement that ICE agents will be sent to airports starting on Monday to fill in for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees who have been on the job without pay for more than a month, administration officials gave conflicting statements about what exactly this would entail.
Officials at ICE were caught off guard by the president’s directive and have been rushing to create a plan, CBS News reported.
White House border czar Tom Homan, who Trump said would be in charge of the operation, told CNN on Sunday that ICE agents will be assigned to jobs like securing exit gates, allowing trained TSA officers to focus on checkpoints and reducing wait times.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that,” Homan said.
But when CNN host Dana Bash asked for confirmation about whether ICE agents would be posted at security screening lines, Homan responded, “Those discussions are going on now.” He said the administration hoped to have a plan “by the end of [Sunday].”
Meanwhile,Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy contradicted some of Homan’s statements, telling ABC News that ICE agents could work on airport security lines because they “run those same type of security machines at the Southern border.”
“We have ICE agents who are trained and can provide assistance to agents,” Duffy said.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA as well as ICE, says more than 400 TSA workers have quit since a partial government shutdown starting on February 14 left them working with no pay. On Saturday, almost 12 percent of TSA employees didn’t come to work, the highest rate since the shutdown began, according to ABC News.
The Trump administration blames the government shutdown and TSA shortages on Democrats. As Mother Jones’ Michael Mechanic has pointed out:
Democrats [have] refused to provide more funds until Republicans agree to various reforms related to deployment, training, and management of ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. . .
Democratic lawmakers also seek to curtail ICE’s rampant use of surveillance technology and ensure the rights of states and lawmakers to investigate alleged human rights abuses at the immigrant detention centers the administration has set up.
But on Saturday, every single Republican voted against the latest Democratic bill to fund the TSA while the negotiations continue over DHS reforms. “This is the seventh time Republicans have blocked pay for TSA,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted on Bluesky. “Seven. Times.”
The funding impasse does not directly affect ICE, Mechanic noted, but the shutdown has frozen other DHS activities, including the processing of paychecks for TSA staff, who are considered essential employees.
It remains unclear whether ICE agents will simply carry out the same tasks as TSA employees or if they will make airports another hub for violence under the guise of “immigration enforcement.”
Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday that ICE agents would “do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants.” In his post, he singled out immigrants from Somalia, who he claimed have “totally destroyed” Minnesota—a narrative that he and his administration used to justify the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis this winter.
Referring to the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis in January, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) responded on Sunday, “The last thing the American people need is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports across the country potentially to brutalize or to kill them.”
Federal unions also pushed back. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents federal workers in Illinois and Wisconsin, including TSA employees, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the ICE deployment raises security concerns for passengers.
“Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe,” Kelley said in a statement. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”
This post has been updated.
