ICE officers will be deployed to airports to help clear the horrendous security lines for the TSA, which ran out of funding more than a month ago because of a Democrat shutdown, President Trump announced Sunday.
The move is meant to speed up security lines, which have stretched up to three hours at some airports as TSA agents walk off the job or call out sick because they haven’t been paid in weeks.
“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hard line criminals who have entered our Country illegally, are endangering the USA by holding back the money that was long ago agreed to with signed and sealed contracts, and all,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president predicted his decision to send the federal immigration agents to airports nationwide would be met with criticism from the left.
“But watch, no matter how great a job ICE does, the Lunatics leading the incompetent Dems will be highly critical of their work,” Trump said, asserting, “THEY WILL DO A FANTASTIC JOB.”
Border czar Tom Homan will be “in charge” of the operation, the president added.
Homan said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that he doesn’t envision ICE agents doing the jobs of TSA screeners, but rather handling other aspects airport security.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an x-ray machine – because you’re not trained in that – [but] there are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs to help move those lines,” he explained.
“We’ll put together a plan today, and we’ll execute tomorrow,” Homan said.
The border czar indicated discussions are ongoing about how many ICE agents will be deployed to airports.
“We’re going to do what we can to help TSA move people through the line,” he added.
Travelers have been facing security line hell this past weekend, with wait times Sunday hitting nearly three hours at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, two hours at Houston’s George Bush International Airport, and more than an hour at JFK in New York.
Even before dawn, the TSA precheck line at JFK appeared to be at a standstill and stretched longer than the regular security checkpoint line.
Nearly two-hour-long lines awaited frustrated flyers attempting to reach their gates at New York’s LaGuardia Airport Sunday morning, with the queue in Terminal B stretching into the parking lot.
In New Jersey, wait times at Newark Liberty International Airport ranged from 5 minutes to longer than 30 minutes in some terminals.
At Philadelphia International Airport, the 6 a.m. security lines were backed up to the Marriott hotel on the premises.
“I have never seen a line this long in Philly,” Reuters reporter Jarrett Renshaw wrote on X.
Widespread TSA absenteeism amid a partial government shutdown prompted Trump to start mobilizing ICE agents for use at airports on Saturday, as he called on Democrats to end the stonewalling that has cut off funding and paychecks for TSA screeners.
Roughly 50,000 TSA agents have been working without pay amid the shutdown, which is entering its 36th day.
Thousands of others have called in sick since Feb. 14, and hundreds have quit their jobs altogether.
ICE, unlike TSA, was funded through last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) slammed the plan.
“The last thing the American people need are untrained ICE agents at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said on “State of the Union.”
Republicans have pushed to fund DHS, while Democrats have sought standalone funding for agencies like TSA that would exclude immigration operations.
“It’s unfortunate 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, rather than get ICE agents under control,” Jeffries argued.
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