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On Monday, at the order of President Donald Trump, ICE agents were deployed to over a dozen airports across the United States, purportedly to help handle Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) duties amid a continued Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.
The shutdown is the result of disagreements on funding the department, with Democrats demanding reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before allowing a vote. The demands come after months of ICE agents conducting violent — and sometimes deadly — crackdowns on immigration in cities across the U.S., terrorizing and abducting residents and denying people their due process rights.
Because of the shutdown, transportation security officers (TSOs) at airports have been working without pay. Some employees have opted to call in sick rather than to work without compensation, which has created longer lines and wait times for travelers to get through TSA checkpoints.
Democrats have offered several legislative options to fund TSA and pay TSOs, but Republicans have blocked those bills. Several media outlets have reported that Trump himself directed Senate Republicans to stymie efforts to fund TSA while the shutdown continues, and he confirmed his preference to block any deals in a Truth Social post this week.
Despite Democratic bills to fund TSA, the Trump administration is blaming the shutdown on Democrats.
White House border czar Tom Homan confirmed that ICE agents were present at several airports across the U.S. on Monday.
“You got 14 right now, and there will be more,” he said, claiming they were there “to help the American people transit those lines that are taking hours.”
Homan also claimed that long lines were “because the Democrats shut the government down, because the Democrats are punishing the men and women of TSA, because they don’t like immigration enforcement,” omitting the fact that Democrats have offered bills to fund the TSA.
Over the weekend, Trump pushed the same false narrative in his announcement that ICE agents would be deployed to airports, stating that they would be there “to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats…are endangering the USA by holding back the money” to pay TSOs.
Trump also indicated that ICE agents would arrest people at airports if agents suspect they are immigrants without documentation.
On Sunday evening, before the order deploying ICE agents to airports, a woman and her daughter were detained by ICE at San Francisco International Airport. Some social media users errantly suggested the arrest happened on Monday, after the directive by Trump.
Video of the woman’s arrest shows ICE agents detaining her in plainclothes, without badges or other identification present, as witnesses ask, several times, for evidence that the agents were who they said they were. Requiring ICE agents to identify themselves is one of Democrats’ main demands for reforms to the agency.
“I need to see your badge number. I don’t know who you are, you could be someone kidnapping her,” a person filming the woman’s arrest said.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump reiterated that ICE would make such arrests while at U.S. airports.
“That’s why the Democrats are going crazy. … [ICE agents] love it because they’re now able to arrest illegals as they come into the country,” he claimed.
“But that’s not why they’re there. They’re really there to help” TSA agents, Trump insisted.
Travelers documenting ICE agents at their airports suggested otherwise, with multiple sources indicating that agents are doing little to lower line wait times or assist TSOs with their duties.
Journalist Marisa Kabas posted on her Bluesky account several images sent to her from travelers at airports in Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, New York City, Phoenix, and Boston. From what those people told Kabas, agents were “just walking around” airports without any “true purpose.” Others reported that they were seen handing bins to people at TSA checkpoints — an action that is unnecessary, as travelers can simply grab the bins themselves.
“Just walked by 3 DHS Police officers just standing around chatting with each other. Not doing anything,” one traveler told Kabas.
Some GOP lawmakers have admitted that the decision to deploy ICE to U.S. airports is politically motivated.
“I’m glad the president has put ICE in there for a multitude of reasons. It’ll drive the Democrats crazy,” Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) said.
Democratic lawmakers, workers’ unions, and immigrant rights organizations decried the Trump administration’s decision to bring ICE agents to the nation’s airports.
“By sending ICE into airports, Trump is proving the problem in real time: ICE has become the president’s lawless, under-trained, personal police force, deployed to serve his agenda — not the law,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on X.
“ICE agents have no business, or the proper training, to function as TSA agents. This is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate people during travel,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said, adding:
We have seen the chaos and havoc that ICE has brought to our communities. The American people do not want that same chaos and cruelty injected into air travel. It will not make any of us safe.
In a joint statement from the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Association of Professional Flight Attendants, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 135, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — organizations that represent flight attendants across the country — the unions derided the administration’s “threat of ICE invasion at airports” as “another distraction from solutions that protect Americans.”
“Flight Attendants will not allow the TSA and the frontline Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) who keep us safe to be used as pawns in this dangerous game, nor will we fly in an aviation system that doesn’t put our safety and security first,” the organizations said, adding that the “introduction of ICE agents into airports creates contradictory missions, as attempts to question passengers about immigration status may distract them from ensuring airport security.”
And in a statement about ICE agents coming to Cleveland Hopkins Airport, Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, said that “ICE has no business in airports, noting how the agents regularly “use racial profiling and excessive force in their daily duties.”
“The TSA is supposed to look at your ID to see if you can fly; they don’t have an immigration enforcement role and they don’t carry guns. In the field, ICE has applied its authority overly broadly, and made many mistakes, including fatal ones,” Tramonte added.
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