Vacationers wait in line at a Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport (ATL) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Friday, March 20, 2026.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers will deploy to airports on Monday to assist ease safety strains amid the Division of Homeland Safety shutdown, White Home border czar Tom Homan stated Sunday.
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to deploy ICE brokers to airports because the shutdown drags into its second month, creating complications for vacationers shifting by way of hours-long Transportation Safety Administration safety strains.
Homan confirmed that ICE can be deployed on Monday throughout an look on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“We can be on the airports tomorrow, serving to TSA transfer these strains alongside,” Homan stated, including that ICE will help in areas like guarding exit doorways to alleviate TSA brokers for screening vacationers. “We’re merely there to assist TSA do their jobs in areas that do not want their specialised experience.”
Homan stated the small print of the plan are nonetheless underneath dialogue, however can be determined by Monday morning when ICE brokers deploy.
“We’ll have a plan by the top of in the present day, what airports we’re beginning with and the place we’re sending them,” Homan stated. “It is a work in progress.”
The transfer to deploy ICE comes because the DHS shutdown, which started on Feb. 14, strains airport employees. Many TSA brokers have both known as out moderately than work with out pay or stop altogether. Greater than 400 TSA officers have left their jobs because the begin of the shutdown, based on an NBC Information report.
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Authorities Workers, slammed the transfer.
“ICE brokers are usually not skilled or licensed in aviation safety,” Kelley stated in a assertion. “TSA officers spend months studying to detect explosives, weapons, and threats particularly designed to evade detection at checkpoints — expertise that require specialised instruction, hands-on follow, and ongoing recertification. You can’t improvise that.”
He added: “Placing untrained personnel at safety checkpoints doesn’t fill a spot. It creates one.”
Kelley known as for Congress “to cease taking part in politics and do their jobs” to fund the TSA.
A spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey informed MS NOW the choice to make use of federal officers at two New York Metropolis airports it oversees “relaxation[s] with the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety.”
“The Port Authority expects that any such personnel assigned to help with passenger processing capabilities can be appropriately skilled and targeted on supporting screening operations, according to sustaining the security, integrity, and effectivity of the safety course of at our airports and defending the flying public,” the spokesperson stated.
Democrats are demanding statutory modifications to immigration enforcement practices in alternate for funding DHS after two U.S. residents had been shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.
Home Democratic Chief Hakeem Jeffries of New York slammed the plan to deploy ICE brokers to airports.
“The very last thing that the American folks want are for untrained ICE brokers to be deployed at airports all throughout the nation, doubtlessly to brutalize or, in some situations, kill them,” Jeffries stated on CNN.
Jeffries, nevertheless, indicated that Democrats don’t plan to again down from their calls for in alternate for funding DHS.
“It is unlucky that Republicans have determined that they’d moderately drive TSA brokers to work with out pay, inconvenience tens of millions of Individuals all throughout the nation and now doubtlessly expose them to untrained ICE brokers and create chaos at airports all through the land moderately than get ICE brokers underneath management,” Jeffries stated. “They must be reined in, and our view is that they need to not get one other dime of taxpayer {dollars} till we’ve daring and dramatic and significant modifications.”
The Democratic chief additionally urged funding TSA and all different DHS subagencies, except ICE and Customs and Border Safety. Democrats have tried to advance such a invoice a number of occasions, however Republicans have stymied the laws, fearing they’d lose leverage to ultimately fund ICE and CBP.
Some Republicans have warmed to the thought of splitting off ICE and CBP funding from the remainder of DHS, which incorporates TSA, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Administration Company and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who leads the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the thought in an interview with The Hill on Saturday. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., additionally introduced up the thought in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire.” Each Kennedy and Cruz stated Republicans would attempt to then go funding for ICE by way of the reconciliation course of, which solely requires 50 votes within the Senate.
“Let’s open up all the pieces however ICE,” Kennedy stated. “However, I can inform you what’s gonna occur subsequent, the Republicans are going to place a reconciliation invoice on the ground that solely requires Republican votes to fund ICE.”
