As the DHS shutdown drags on and the TSA staffing crisis continues to get worse, President Donald Trump has a novel solution: Deploy ICE to airports. He threatened Senate Democrats Saturday with this move should they not fund DHS immediately to get TSA workers paid, and one can only imagine the indigestion that caused. Well, fund DHS they did not – and, so, deploy to airports ICE shall.
Promise made, promise kept.
More Than One Way to Skin a Cat
President Trump posted on Truth Social:
“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota. I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports.”
The whole funding fight farce right now is based on Democrats’ perception that ICE and CBP agents are mad dogs let off the leash and that the agencies must be reined in and reformed before they get even one more red cent. But there’s a problem with their argument: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed and signed into law last year, appropriates enough money for ICE and CBP to operate at their current level for several years.
All refusing to sign a DHS funding bill does is cause financial difficulties for everyone else in the department – like the TSA agents at airports across the nation who are about to miss their second full paycheck. Since the “problem agencies” aren’t strapped for cash, the only leverage Democrats have to force Republicans and the president to give in to their list of demands is that the rest of DHS – from TSA to the Secret Service and FEMA and many others – to work without pay.
The GOP and White House have offered multiple rounds of compromise, but Democrats – all except Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, that is – refuse to negotiate. Well, as the old saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat – and President Trump found another way.
On Sunday, March 22 – just a day after Trump’s threat on social media – border czar Tom Homan announced on CNN’s State of the Union that ICE agents will deploy to airports across the country on Monday to assist TSA officers – and the president has put him in charge of the operation.
ICE Is Up for the Job
Bill Melugin, congressional correspondent for FOX news, posted on X that he reached out to “a handful of ICE agents” to see how they felt about President Trump’s idea. “Love it,” one said. “Genius. We serve at the behest…” said another. “Lots of illegals at airports,” one pointed out. In short, it seems like the actual agents on the ground are all for it.
There are some concerns, though, as to the legality of immigration officers doing the TSA screening job. Rather than wade into that potential legal nightmare, the Trump Administration is going to side-step it entirely. ICE won’t get involved in screenings – just the other tasks usually performed by TSA that can free up trained and authorized staff to focus on clearing travelers and getting them on their way.
“ICE agents are assigned to many airports across the country already,” Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash. “They do a lot of investigation, criminal investigation on smuggling at airports. But you got TSA agents covering exits, people that enter through exits.”
“Certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit and make sure people don’t go through those exits, entering the airport through those exits. And stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines,” he added.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is one of the first to receive the influx of ICE officers today, according to DHS and the Atlanta mayor’s office. As Homan explained, they’ll reportedly be covering exits and helping with crowd management.
And the extra hands come just in the nick of time. Last week, Atlanta posted wait times as long as five hours, with three hours not being uncommon. But the airport has since stopped posting expected times, as they become simply unpredictable. Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the press to expect the closure of small airports within a week. And as of now, the total callout rate for TSA is over 11% nationally with more than 400 having left the force permanently since the shutdown began almost 40 days ago.
Eye of the Beholder
The American Federation of Government Employees, the biggest federal employee union in the US, says it’s a bad idea, as ICE agents aren’t trained in aviation security. Congressional Democrats say it’s still illegal, even if ICE doesn’t get involved in security screenings, because general security is outside of their charter, and progressives nationwide argue the presence of ICE will make Americans uncomfortable. Never mind, of course, that the agency is already working in airports across the country, as Homan pointed out.
But how will the actual people trying to travel view the issue? For the legal residents and visitors who aren’t breaking the law and simply want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, it’s going to be hard to argue with a one or two hour wait rather than a five-plus hour wait – no mater their personal politics or even citizenship status. In this way, the move might actually have the potential to net ICE some badly needed positive publicity at a time when the general public view of the agency is at an all-time low.
That said, it would only take one sensational negative interaction with a crowd – or protesters, who will almost certainly turn up – going viral to blow any chance of that. Still, assuming the TSA callout and quit rates don’t skyrocket with this next missed paycheck, having additional officers on hand from any agency will help process lines faster. And that may prove good enough, for now.
