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Shutdown becomes showdown as ICE takes on airports
As the Trump administration positions federal immigration troops at airports around the country, experts question the effectiveness of the presence of untrained agents
The White House dispatched squads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troops to at least 13 airports around the country, and thousands of commuters this week are coming face-to-face with the Trump administration’s anti-immigration push. ICE’s deployment was telegraphed by both President Donald Trump and White House Border Czar Tom Homan last weekend, with the ostensible goal of optimizing TSA operations during the ongoing partial government shutdown.
The move has thrust the White House’s authoritarian operations into the frenetic realm of commercial air travel, where delays and disruptions can grow to levels of national import. With the agency’s undefined remit and documented penchant for aggression, its presence in U.S. airports is a Rorschach test for attitudes on the regime’s militarized approach to law enforcement.
‘Political, publicity action, not a practical solution’
“Between 100 and 150 ICE officers” have been sent to more than a dozen airports across the country, The New York Times said. It is “unclear” if their presence is “helping or exacerbating long security lines” that have grown during the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown. Homan will likely deploy agents to be as “minimally intrusive as possible,” but their actual contributions to TSA’s airport security mandate won’t be “operationally significant,” said former Obama administration acting ICE director John Sandweg to Time.
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Unlike TSA agents who are trained for specific airport duties, ICE personnel will not receive “requisite training to check identification, examine luggage x-rays” and “provide other key security services,” said Government Executive. Putting ICE agents at airports is a “political, publicity action,” one former TSA official said to the outlet. It’s “not a practical solution.”
“I have no idea how they can contribute at an airport unless it was for intimidation purposes,” said Aaron Vazquez, a TSA lead transportation security officer at San Diego International Airport and airport steward for the local branch of the American Federation of Government Employees union, to KPBS. “What are they going to do, find somebody and shoot them?”
As of Monday, “both masked and unmasked ICE agents in marked vests” had been observed at some of the country’s busiest airports, said USA Today. Travelers nevertheless were “still reporting long airport security waits.” One reason for the continued airport disruptions is Trump’s weekend ICE deployment having caught the agency’s officials “off guard,” leaving them “scrambling to come up with a plan to enforce it,” CBS News said. White House officials, however, insisted that dispatching ICE units to airports will be a smooth process. “When we deploy tomorrow,” said Homan on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend, “we’ll have a well-thought-out plan to execute.”
ICE’s stationing in American airports, beyond any potential advantage to security enforcement, is “likely a tactical move” designed to “up the pressure on Democrats in Congress” who are blocking Homeland Security funds, in part over ICE’s conduct in Minnesota and Chicago, said New York magazine. Democrats have “condemned” ICE at airports, so it’s not certain whether the deployment will “move the needle as funding negotiations continue.”
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If not ICE, ‘it would have been the National Guard’
President Trump’s pushing of ICE agents into air-travel security spaces is a “stunt, not a policy solution,” said The Washington Post. But “so is the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Congressional Democrats want to use long lines and travel delays to aid in their DHS negotiations, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on ABC’s “This Week.” The White House’s deployment of immigration forces to airports will “take that leverage away and not make the American people suffer.”
Deploying ICE agents to airports is the “right course of action,” said Puerto Rico’s Republican Governor Jenniffer González Colón at a press conference. If the administration hadn’t sent ICE, “it would have been the National Guard. Why?” Because there is a “problem” with TSA absences leading to extreme travel delays.
Still, some White House’s supporters have expressed anxieties at the plan. The viability of ICE in airports depends on “whether or not logistically you can get these guys into those places and get them up to speed on it,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said at The Hill. If the DHS shutdown continues for an “extended period of time, yeah, it could be a necessity.”
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
