Trump administration officials tried to explain how a surge of ICE agents to the nation’s airports, due to begin Monday, would alleviate some of the travel pressures Americans have faced in the midst of a Department of Homeland Security shutdown that is now in its second month.
Border Czar Tom Homan said Sunday that ICE agents would assist in airport security while also enforcing the president’s immigration agenda. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, meanwhile, claimed ICE agents were already trained to perform tasks at airports – such as patting down individuals and operating X-ray scanning technology.
The president revealed his plans to deploy ICE agents to airports on Saturday. Despite passengers being hampered by long lines caused by the ongoing TSA shortages, Trump suggested the agents would instead be used to guarantee “security like no one has ever seen before.” The agents, he said, would also carry out “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”
When questioned about whether there was a coherent plan to help ICE agents fulfil their new duties, Homan seemed to suggest that their job would be more aligned with Trump’s immigration objective, rather than dealing with the problems that have arisen for travelers.
“When we deploy tomorrow, we'll have a well-thought-out plan to execute,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.
“How much of a plan does it [require] to guard an exit, to make sure no one comes through that exit?” Homan continued. "Again, ICE has been at airports across the country for a long time. It's just expanding those things."
He added that his agents were going to “do what they can to move those people through the line,” but didn’t outline how large numbers of agents would be able to be trained on TSA technology and procedures quickly, given staff shortages already being experienced by the agency.
In a separate TV appearance, Duffy said the president’s suggestion “makes a lot of sense.”
"TSA agents are law enforcement. They know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines because they are under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy told ABC News’ This Week. “So if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, I think that makes a lot of sense."
TSA’s acting director, Adam Stahl, has warned that if the federal government does not solve problems created by the ongoing shutdown soon, individual airports could find themselves without any TSA personnel to conduct security screenings. In those instances, airports would be forced to close until security screenings resumed.
“It’s not hyperbole to suggest that we may have to quite literally shut down airports, particularly smaller ones, if call-out rates go up,” Stahl said last week.
A federal law enforcement veteran, who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity, said having ICE agents staff TSA checkpoints would likely be a frustrating and ineffective exercise for all involved.
An experienced criminal investigator, he said the training received by ICE agents isn't applicable to the tasks performed by TSA, such as reviewing X-ray images of luggage and conducting respectful pat-down searches of travelers when needed.
The rapid expansion of ICE under Trump’s second term, in particular, has already raised concerns among many of the administration’s critics about the general quality of recruits being fielded by the agency and the rigor of the training those recruits receive after joining.
While ICE agents are trained on how to frisk a person for weapons, the longtime federal agent stressed that there is a significant difference between checking for weapons on a person who is being detained or under arrest and checking airline passengers to ensure they are not concealing improvised weapons or explosives in their clothing.
The deaths of two Americans in confrontations with federal agents in Minnesota forced the administration to scale back its enforcement surge in the city after a national outcry that led to even Republicans on the Hill calling for reforms to the agency. Those reforms have yet to be implemented, and are part of the ongoing negotiations between Senate Democrats, their Republican colleagues and the White House as talks over reopening DHS continue in Washington.
On CNN’s same broadcast Sunday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out his party’s stark concerns: "The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them.”
Among the reforms Democrats are demanding that ICE include an end to large-scale roving enforcement operations or “raids”, the unmasking of ICE agents in the field, and a requirement that agents obtain judicial warrants before performing searches of private property.
Meanwhile, roughly 50,000 TSA workers have been operating under shutdown conditions for five weeks and missed their first full paychecks earlier this month. Staff shortages spiked at the beginning of last week and are expected to grow as more pay periods go by. Talks in Washington have veered towards finding a solution to the roadblocks, but repeated attempts by Democrats to offer standalone legislation aimed at paying TSA agents have been rejected by Republicans.
Ariana Baio contributed to this report.
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