Starting on Monday, the Trump administration will be sending ICE agents to airports across the country, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced on Sunday.
Funding for both ICE and TSA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, lapsed on February 14 after the Senate could not pass a funding bill for the Department.
Democrats have refused to sign off on a DHS funding bill without modest changes made to the rules governing ICE in its crackdown on immigrants, especially in light of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents.
The lapse in funding has put a huge financial strain on TSA workers who are expected to work without pay for the second time in six months, with the first one being during the longest full government shutdown in U.S. history.
A third of TSA agents working at half the busiest airports across the nation called out of work on Saturday. With airports working in reduced capacity, travelers have been met with incredibly long lines at security checkpoints.
As Democrats stuck to their guns on DHS funding requirements, Trump threatened the ICE deployment on his Truth Social account on Saturday, claiming that the agents would not only help TSA but would also arrest immigrants, “with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”
The union representing TSA officers promptly issued a statement against the decision, saying that ICE agents will create more problems than they could solve.
“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Everett Kelly, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in the statement. “Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
There is inconsistency coming from administration officials on just what exactly ICE agents are well-trained to accomplish.
Homan told CNN that TSA agents will be handling “non-significant roles” that don’t require “specialized expertise…such as guarding an exit so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker.”
Meanwhile, transportation secretary Sean Duffy told ABC News that ICE agents have adequate security training, and that “they run those same type of security machines at the southern border.”
Ultimately, there is no clear plan yet on how the deployment will go tomorrow. Homan told CNN that he expects a “well-thought-out plan” to be finalized before the deployment that’s a couple of hours away.
The union argues that there is a better way to address the problem: by paying the workers.
“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,” Kelly said. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”
Both ICE and TSA are funded by DHS, but ICE was not affected by the partial government shutdown thanks to the $75 billion it received from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year. Democrats, like House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have suggested funding TSA and other agencies under the DHS by separating ICE and Customs and Border Protection funding, but the bill failed in the Senate as Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman voted against it.
Although most Republicans are against separating ICE and CBP from a DHS funding bill, some, like Sen. Ted Cruz, have recently begun to support the idea. Republican Sen. John Kennedy said that if a DHS bill passes without the immigration agencies, ICE could then be funded through a reconciliation bill that could pass with 50 votes in the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats.
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