ICE agents are in these 13 airports assisting TSA as DHS shutdown drags on
Travelers at crowded U.S. airports on Monday spotted Department of Homeland Security personnel, including ICE agents, who were tasked with helping Transportation Security Administration workers as they entered another week without pay due to a partial government shutdown.
NBC News confirmed that ICE and DHS officers and agents were at several major airports, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
At O’Hare Terminal 3, armed DHS agents and officers were seen on a walkway connecting the secure area to the general terminal. An officer manning that area told an NBC News field producer that ICE agents were helping with security and not checking people’s IDs as they passed through.
The response rate for TSA workers, who have not been paid in weeks, reached a record high on Sunday, at 11.76%, according to DHS.
As of Sunday, New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport had a call rate of 42.3 percent, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson had a 41.5 percent call rate and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport had a 37.4 percent call rate, a DHS spokesperson said.
The presence of ICE and DHS agents and officers was a popular topic of conversation among passengers and airline employees on a flight from Memphis to Atlanta Monday morning. In a conversation heard by NBC News, the pilot and flight attendants said they hoped ICE agents wouldn’t create more chaos because “they’re not trained to have the patience that we have in this business.”
A senior ICE official told NBC News that at least 50 ICE personnel per shift will be present at each airport and will not perform screening tasks. Another ICE official said ICE officers and agents are not trained to use the magnetometers or X-ray machines that TSA agents operate and supervise at airports.
ICE officers and agents are trained in crowd control, line monitoring and ID checking, skills that could be useful in lines at airports leading to security screening, the second ICE official said. Boarding domestic flights requires a real ID or passport, which limits immigration arrests at airports.
Americans in recent days have found themselves crowded into crowded airports with long security lines, with some taking up to three hours to get through.
The government’s prolonged shutdown of parts of the Department of Homeland Security, the result of partisan gridlock over immigration policy, has combined with spring break travel at a time when TSA employees have left the agency or missed work because they are not being paid.
White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that ICE agents would be deployed to some airports starting Monday to help TSA officers provide security at entry and exit. He said ICE agents would first be sent to airports with the longest wait times.
President Donald Trump said Monday that his idea was to send officers to airports and said that “if that’s not enough, I’ll call in the National Guard.” He wrote in Truth Social that “ICE will do the job much better than ever before!”
Trump said he had asked ICE agents not to wear masks in airports, even though he supports them in their immigration enforcement duties.
ICE officers and agents at airports are escalating an already heated partisan fight in Congress over DHS funding, which expired last month. Trump on Monday urged Republicans not to make any deals with Democrats until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, the president’s sweeping bill.
“The most important part of homeland security is voter identification and proof of citizenship,” Trump said during a roundtable in Memphis, Tennessee. “No one can vote on Homeland Security without voter ID or proof of citizenship.”
The deployment of ICE agents has raised some concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement Sunday that “families traveling to visit loved ones should not have to deal with ICE agents who likely have no training or experience in the airport security mission.”
“Never in our history has a president deployed armed agents to the airport to instill fear in families,” the ACLU said.
Learn more about TSA and the impact of the shutdown:
Matt Hill, a spokesman for Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, said: “Instead of paying our TSA workers and fixing long airport lines, President Trump is throwing gasoline on the fire. »
“Illinois knows firsthand how masked, untrained federal agents have instilled fear in our families and caused chaos in our communities,” Hill said, adding that Trump and Republicans must vote for specific legislation to pay TSA agents to “get airports back on track.”
As of Monday morning, NBC News had confirmed the presence of ICE officers and agents at 13 airports, although airports may be added and removed from the list throughout the day:
- Chicago O’Hare International Airport
- Cleveland Hopkins International Airport
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
- William P. Hobby Houston Airport
- John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York)
- LaGuardia Airport (New York)
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport
- Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
- Newark Liberty International Airport
- Philadelphia International Airport
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport
- Pittsburgh International Airport
- Southwest Florida International Airport (Fort Myers, Florida)
Customs and Border Protection agents are regularly present at airports ahead of this week’s ICE deployment. CBP is involved in screening arrivals and cargo, while the Border Patrol provides screening at some airports.
