Donald Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, have confirmed that ICE agents will be deployed to ease security lines amid the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
The agents will help airport security agents who have been working without pay since the shutdown on 14 February, which led to more than 400 TSA officers quitting their jobs.
Trump said Homan will lead the effort on a post on Truth Social.
“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 posted.
“The great Tom Homan is in charge!!!”
Homan further confirmed Trump’s announcement in an interview with CNBC.
“We will be at the airports tomorrow, helping TSA move those lines along,” Homan said, adding that ICE will assist in areas like guarding exit doors to relieve TSA agents for screening travellers.
“We’re simply there to help TSA do their jobs in areas that don’t need their specialised expertise.”
Details of the plan are still under development, but will be decided on the day ICE agents are deployed.
“We’ll have a plan by the end of today, what airports we’re starting with and where we’re sending them,” Homan said.
“It’s a work in progress.”
This will be the first time a president has deployed armed agents to the airports nd has been slammed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“President Trump and his allies in Congress refused to fund TSA and manufactured a crisis at airports across the country,” ACLU director of policy and government affairs for immigration, Naureen Shah, said.
“This is the exact opposite of what the American people are clamouring for, which are real, enforceable changes to rein in ICE and Border Patrol’s cruel deportation and detention obsession.”
The American Federation of Government Employees president, Everett Kelley, also disagreed with the move.
“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Kelley said in a statement.
“TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialised instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that.”
He called for Congress to “stop playing politics and do their jobs” to fund the TSA.
Democrats are demanding statutory changes to immigration enforcement practices in exchange for funding DHS after two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York slammed the plan to deploy ICE agents to airports.
“The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalise or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said on CNN.
Jeffries also said that Democrats do not plan to back down from their demands in exchange for funding DHS.
“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 said.
“They need to be reined in, and our view is that they should not get another dime of taxpayer dollars until we have bold and dramatic and meaningful changes.”
