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President Donald Trump said he is sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports on Monday, after threatening to do so unless congressional Democrats agree to a GOP-backed funding deal.
"ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents," Trump said in a social media post on Sunday morning, escalating a standoff over the funding deal that has slowed security lines at airports nationwide.
In an earlier post to Truth Social over the weekend, Trump had said the ICE agents would "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."
Deploying agents to checkpoints nationwide would mark an unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement even as Democrats push for tighter limits on how those agents operate, citing concerns the administration has fast-tracked training to expand ICE ranks.
Speaking to CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning, White House border czar Tom Homan said the administration is working to identify what exactly ICE agents will be doing and which airports they will be assigned to. Homan said he expected to have a plan by the end of the day.
"We will be at the airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along," he said.
Homan told "Fox News Sunday" that ICE agents will not be involved in X-ray screening or other work that requires specialized training. But he said they can do other tasks - such as guarding exit doors or checking passengers' identification before they enter a screening area.
John Sandweg, a former acting director at ICE during the Obama administration, said the impact of the new deployment will largely be determined by the details of its execution - including which ICE agents are sent, how many and where inside airports they are stationed.
Sandweg emphasized that when the Transportation Security Administration is short-staffed, the biggest slowdowns tend to occur at X-ray machines, baggage screening and ID checks - functions that he said require specialized training. "I find it hard to say operationally there's any basis to do this other than to use ICE again as a political wedge to try to put pressure on Democrats to end the shutdown," he said. "I think that's what this is all about."
Homan said the deployment "allows the TSA officer to go back to screening to move people through quicker," he said. "We're trying to release TSA resources to get to positions they really need expertise like the X-ray screening. We're going to be a force multiplier."
Joe Shuker, a regional vice president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 100, which represents TSA employees, said that managing exits has become less staffing-intensive with the adoption of automated exits, and much of TSA agents' other work requires specialized training and technical expertise.
"It doesn't seem like a lot of help," Shuker said of the plan to send ICE agents to airports.
Democrats have refused to fund certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security - which includes ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection - until the GOP agrees to new restrictions on immigration enforcement after federal personnel killed Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minneapolis. But the agencies they're seeking to change - ICE and CBP - have largely continued operations after receiving billions of dollars last year as part of Republicans' tax and spending bill.
The congressional standoff has left the majority of TSA employees working without pay for more than a month, prompting an increase in worker absences at airports and threatening worsening disruptions for travelers as spring break nears for millions of students.
The changes Democrats are seeking include a requirement that ICE agents get a warrant from a judge before forcefully entering homes and cease wearing masks. The Trump administration has agreed to several requests, including the expanded use of body-worn cameras and limiting civil enforcement activities at certain locations, including hospitals, schools and places of worship.
On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) told CNN that Republicans "have decided that they would rather force TSA agents to work without pay, inconvenience millions of Americans all across the country, and now potentially expose them to untrained ICE agents and create chaos at airports throughout the land" instead of passing the ICE changes that Democrats are asking for.
Jeffries urged Republicans in both chambers to pass legislation to pay TSA officers even as the DHS shutdown continues. Jeffries noted that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) have indicated support for such a measure.
"Let's bring those bills to the floor in the House and the Senate tomorrow so we can get TSA agents paid," Jeffries said.
Trump, in a second post about the matter to Truth Social on Saturday, accused Democrats of hurting "so many people with their vicious and uncaring ways."
"What they have done to the Department of Homeland Security, our fantastic TSA Officers, and, most importantly, the great people of our Country, is an absolute disgrace," he continued, pledging to dispatch ICE to airports on Monday.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a statement said Trump should focus his attention on his own party.
"Surely, the next thing people want after waiting hours in long TSA lines is to get wrongfully detained by ICE," she said. "Here's an idea: instead of sidelining TSA agents and sending ICE to harass travelers, the president should tell Republicans to stop blocking our bill to pay TSA."
Some Border Patrol agents currently work checkpoints at airports along the southern border. Trump said that he would deploy the ICE agents if Democrats did not "immediately sign an agreement."
That type of operation, Sandweg said, would almost certainly target a population of immigrants without criminal history.
"For every one person with criminal history you will encounter 15 people who have been here for a long time, and there are far more efficient ways of getting to that criminal population through a targeted approach," Sandweg said.
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