The Department of Homeland Security has deployed ICE agents to assist TSA officers at airports during the shutdown, drawing criticism from lawmakers and unions over training and security concerns.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deployed ICE agents to airports to assist TSA screeners Monday. President Trump had announced the plan over the weekend on social media, offering few details, claiming only that agents would “do security like no one has ever seen before,” and that agents would continue immigration enforcement tasks while working alongside the TSA.
Tom Homan the White House border czar, told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning that the full plan to deploy ICE agents to airports was still being drawn up. Since the DHS shutdown on February 14, 50,000 TSA workers have continued working without pay, and sick call rates and resignations are running significantly higher than normal. A TSA official last week even said some smaller airports would be in danger of closing if absences spike to the point where there aren’t enough staff to cover screening operations.
Homan said the deployment plans would be complete by Sunday afternoon, ready for a Monday deployment at airports. He said “his opinion” was that ICE agents would largely be assigned to cover roles that don’t require specialized training, such as monitoring exit doors, to free up TSA agents to cover other, more specialized roles, like checking passenger identification and screening passenger baggage.
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“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’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 into specialized jobs, help move those lines,” Homan said. He also confirmed that agents would conduct immigration enforcement duties at the airport.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an interview immediately after Homan’s, said ICE agents at airports were “the last thing the American people need.”
“We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself,” Jeffries said. “These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have for the most part, let alone deploying them in close exposure and highly sensitive situations at airports across the country.”
Unions representing TSA screeners also voiced concerns. Everett Kelley, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said in a statement: “ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security. TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints—skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
Other TSA agents expressed concerns about tensions between the two workgroups, stemming from the fact that while TSA workers have been going without pay during the shutdown, ICE agents are still receiving paychecks. A TSA screener at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport suggested that putting the two workgroups together would be a distraction.
The AFGE, in their statement, said a better option would be for Congress to vote, if not to end the DHS shutdown, to at least provide continued pay for airport screeners, echoing a similar call from several airline CEOs earlier this month.
CNN reported that half the nation’s busiest airports had more than a third of their TSA workforces call out on Saturday. The news site also reported Atlanta—which had some of the highest call-out rates—would be one of the airports to receive ICE agents on Monday.
The DHS remains partially shuttered over an impasse in Congress on funding the agency. Democrats have demanded more limits on ICE operations, including a prohibition on agents covering their faces. Late Sunday, President Trump injected a new demand into already fragile negotiations to fund the department—that Democrats would also need to agree to back the SAVE America Act passed by the House of Representatives by a slim margin on February 12. The bill, which adds proof-of-citizenship requirements at polling places, remains stalled in the Senate, where it requires 60 votes to pass.
AFGE’s Kelley said the power to solve the situation lies with lawmakers. “Congress has the power to fund TSA today. It’s time for them to stop playing politics and do their jobs.”
