Trump says ICE agents will deploy to U.S. airports Monday

What began as a social media post from President Trump on Saturday has grown quickly into a full-scale plan to deploy ICE agents to U.S. airports.

Amid a partial government shutdown, Transportation Security Administration lines have grown to be hours long at some U.S. airports, creating problems for travelers across the country. Call-out rates have started to increase at some airports, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said at least 376 TSA agents have quit since the partial shutdown began Feb. 14.

By Sunday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that ICE would indeed deploy to airports beginning Monday.

White House border advisor Tom Homan provided additional details earlier in the day during a televised interview, saying that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to dispatch agents to airports and that he was working with other officials to determine where to send agents.

“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said during a Sunday appearance on CNN. “But we will be at airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along.”

Homan stressed that ICE agents would provide support where possible, so that TSA staffers could better fulfill specialized positions.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because they are not trained in that,” Homan said.

But communication about how exactly this plan would work has been spotty. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, has not received any communication from Homeland Security on this issue and first learned about it in Trump’s Truth Social post, as well as through the press, said Jacqueline Simon, the union’s policy director.

Dispatching ICE agents to airports does nothing to solve the problem at hand, which is that TSA officers have not been paid for more than a month, she said.

“It’s ridiculous, and it’s potentially dangerous,” Simon said. “It creates a security risk, it doesn’t solve one.”

In a statement Sunday, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom said Trump’s push to send ICE into airports “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,” according to the statement. “That’s exactly why it needs to be reined in.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also criticized the plan, noting in a lengthy statement Sunday that this was the first time a president has sent armed ICE agents to airports to replace security officers.

“This is the exact opposite of what the American people are clamoring for, which are real, enforceable changes to rein in ICE and Border Patrol’s cruel deportation and detention obsession,” Naureen Shah, ACLU director of policy and government affairs for immigration, said in the statement.

The plans were seemingly first set in motion following Trump’s social media post on Saturday that read, “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.”

Expanding the argument for the deployment beyond simply alleviating long lines at TSA, Trump said ICE would also oversee “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”

Speaking from the floor of the Senate on Sunday, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “ICE agents, who are untrained and have caused problems everywhere they’ve gone, lurking at our airports — that’s asking for trouble. And it will certainly make the chaos at our airports worse.”

At the core of the partial shutdown is a disagreement between congressional Republicans and Democrats over continued funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans want to fund all parts of Homeland Security, while Democrats want that funding tied to ICE reforms. Democrats have put forward bills to fund key components of Homeland Security, including the TSA, which Republicans have opposed.

Though negotiations are said to be ongoing, the shutdown could drag on even longer as Congress is scheduled for a two-week recess beginning at the end of this week, and each side blames the other for the continued shutdown.

In a social media post, Vice President JD Vance wrote, “We’ve all seen the chaos unleashed by Democrats at airports across the country. It’s preposterous that Chuck Schumer continues to hold TSA funding hostage.”

Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, “Right now, Republicans are holding TSA agents’ paychecks hostage because they want to provide more money to ICE, without basic reforms to protect Americans’ rights and safety.”

Appearing on MS NOW on Saturday, before Homan’s confirmation that ICE would be sent to airports, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) said, “Americans don’t want ICE in our communities, they don’t want them in our airports. They by and large, as I support, want ICE to be abolished.”

Swalwell did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday, but posted on X, saying, “Pay TSA. Do not pay ICE.”

In a Sunday interview with ABC, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, “Democrats want to see long lines at airports as leverage. President Trump’s trying to take that leverage away and not make the American people suffer.”

The pushback to the White House’s plans to put ICE in airports was immediate.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, released a statement that read, “Masked, armed police at travel checkpoints is a hallmark of dystopian movies. Now, Donald Trump is threatening to bring this tool of fascism to America. He is manufacturing chaos at airports for political leverage and trying to force Democrats to accept unaccountable secret police at security checkpoints around the country.”

“Bad idea,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) about the new airport security plan.

“What we need to do is, we need to get the DHS issues resolved, we need to get the TSA agents paid,” she told reporters at the Capitol, where the Senate held a rare weekend session. “Do you really want to have even additional tensions on top of what we are already facing?”

Also speaking to CNN on Sunday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said, “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. We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself.”

In a statement Sunday, Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said, “More than 50,000 TSA employees have worked without pay for over five weeks. Hundreds have quit. And Washington’s answer isn’t to pay them. It’s to send ICE agents to do their jobs.

“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Kelley added. “You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one. … Congress has the power to fund TSA today. It’s time for them to stop playing politics and do their jobs.”

Representatives from Los Angeles International Airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Orange County’s John Wayne Airport said she was not aware of any communication or Homeland Security guidance on the proposed plan.

A spokesperson for San Francisco International Airport said airport officials have not yet received anything specific from Homeland Security about a deployment of ICE agents. He said SFO security personnel are not part of TSA, and as a result, the airport has not had any checkpoint backups.

U.S. senators on Sunday advanced the nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to be Trump’s next Homeland Security secretary by a largely party-line vote, 54-37, with two Democrats joining most Republicans. A vote on the confirmation could come as early as Monday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.