Recommendations of the Editorial team
ICE agents have begun temporarily assisting the Transportation Security Administration at airports across the United States. The deployment, announced by Donald Trump over the weekend, comes after the president rejected a standalone proposal to fund the TSA, according to a report – amid an ongoing budget dispute over the Department of Homeland Security.
Airports across the country are groaning with absurdly long security lines as TSA agents refuse service without pay while DHS funding remains frozen. The TSA budget has become collateral damage in a larger power struggle over the actions of DHS agents in the first year of the Trump administration. Democrats have been blocking funding for the department for weeks and demanding sweeping changes to immigration oversight and accountability – including warrants as a prerequisite for arrests and a ban on agents concealing their identities through masks or other means. Trump and the Republicans refuse to play along.
Trump announced the deployment in a Truth Social post on Saturday, writing that he would deploy our “brilliant and patriotic ICE agents to the airports where they will provide security like never before” and that their duties would include “the immediate arrest of all illegal immigrants who have come into our country, with a particular focus on those from Somalia.”
Homan waves him off
Although TSA agents undergo months of specialized training, Immigration Commissioner Tom Homan waved away concerns about ICE’s lack of training in a CNN interview a day later. “How much planning does it take to guard an exit and make sure no one gets through?” he asked host Dana Bash.
Trump seems to care very little about the problem. He played golf over the weekend – despite attacking Obama in 2016 for playing golf while the TSA was “falling apart” – and shows no willingness to work with Congress on the issue.
According to a report from Punchbowl News on Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) brought a proposal to the White House: Republicans would support a bill to fund all of DHS except ICE — whose brutal actions sparked the shutdown — and Democrats agreed. Trump said no, according to sources who spoke to Punchbowl.
Trump’s calculation
Why reject a deal that could defuse a growing public relations crisis for the government? Trump and the White House seem to believe that they can blame the chaos at the airports on the Democrats – and are now sending unpopular ICE agents on already stressed travelers. At a press appearance on Monday, Trump told reporters that it was his idea to send ICE to the airports. “It was like the paper clip. Do you know the history of the paper clip? 182 years ago a man invented the paper clip. So simple. And everyone who saw it thought, ‘Why didn’t I think of it myself?’ ICE was my idea,” the president said.
On Sunday night, Trump told News Nation he doesn’t believe “any deal should be made on this thing until they approve SAVE America” - the Republican-proposed voting reform that would require Americans to present proof of citizenship in person when registering to vote. The remarks echoed statements Trump shared on Truth Social over the weekend in which he called not only for the SAVE Act to pass, but also for it to include “voter ID (with photo!), citizenship as a voting requirement, no mail-in voting (with exceptions), only paper ballots, no men in women’s sports, and no transgender MUTILATION of our precious children.”
“May faction leader Thune clearly name which few ‘Republicans’ are voting against AMERICA. They will never be elected again!” wrote Trump.
ICE on patrol
In some cities, waiting times at airports exceed four hours. When travelers posted the first images of ICE agents “assisting” at security checkpoints on Monday, they hardly seemed busy – they stood menacingly next to employees and patrolled the hallways. ICE agents’ salaries are not affected by the shutdown. So while TSA staff work without pay, the Trump administration has now assigned airport security guards glorified guards who are simply not trained for the core tasks of the job.
