Travelers in America’s overstressed airports on Monday spotted Department of Homeland Security personnel, including ICE agents, who have been tasked with assisting 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 Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
At O’Hare’s Terminal 3, armed DHS agents and officers were seen at a walkway connecting the secured area to the general terminal. An officer manning that area told an NBC News field producer the ICE agents were helping with security and not checking people’s IDs as they passed by.
The callout rate for TSA workers, who have not been paid in weeks, reached a high on Sunday, at 11.76%, according to DHS.
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As of Sunday, New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport had a call-out rate of 42.3%, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson’s was 41.5% and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was 37.4%, a DHS spokesperson said.
The presence of ICE and DHS agents and officers was a popular topic of conversation among passengers and airline workers on a flight from Memphis to Atlanta Monday morning. In one conversation overheard by NBC News, the pilot and flight attendants said they hope ICE agents don’t create more chaos, because “they’re not trained to have the patience we have in this business.”
A senior ICE official told NBC News that at least 50 ICE personnel per shift will be at each airport and will not be performing screening duties. Another ICE official said that ICE officers and agents are not trained to use magnetometers or X-ray machines that TSA agents operate and oversee at airports.
ICE officers and agents are trained in crowd control, monitoring lines and checking IDs, skills that could be useful at airport lines leading to security screening, the second ICE official said. Boarding domestic flights requires Real ID or a passport, limiting immigration arrests at airports.
Americans have found themselves stuffed into crowded airports with long security lines in recent days, some taking as long as three hours to get through.
The government’s extended shutdown of parts of the Department of Homeland Security, a result of a partisan stalemate over immigration policy, has combined with spring break travel at a time when TSA workers have been leaving the agency or been absent from 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 deploy to certain airports starting Monday to assist TSA officers with security at entrances and exits. He said that the ICE officers would be first sent to airports with the highest wait times.
President Donald Trump said on Monday it was his idea to send agents to the airports and said if “if that’s not enough, I’ll bring in the National Guard. He wrote in Truth Social that “ICE will do the job far better than ever done before!”
Trump said he’s asked that ICE officers not to wear masks at airports, even though he supports them wearing masks in their immigration enforcement duties.
The ICE officers and agents at the airports are intensifying 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 voting bill.
“The most important part of homeland security is voter ID and proof of citizenship,” Trump said at a roundtable event in Memphis, Tennessee. “Nobody can vote on Homeland Security without voter ID or proof of citizenship.”
At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Sunday, traveler Andre Bourke said the presence of ICE agents at airports “is going to make it even more nerve-racking for people.”
At O’Hare, Ginny Klein, 78, gave TSA agents gift cards for food and gas and said she hoped the ICE agents “left their guns at home — I just don’t think they have the right attitude right now.”
A few others at O’Hare who didn’t want to go on camera told NBC News they didn’t mind the presence of ICE agents as long as they were helping the lines move.
The deployment of the ICE officers has raised some concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement on Sunday that “families traveling to see loved ones should not have to deal with ICE agents who likely have no training or experience with the mission of airport security.”
“Never in our history has a president deployed armed agents to the airport to inspire fear among families,” ACLU said.
More on TSA and shutdown impact:
Matt Hill, spokesperson for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said, “Instead of paying our TSA workers and fixing long lines at airports, President Trump is pouring gasoline into a fire.”
“Illinois knows firsthand how untrained, masked federal agents instilled fear in our families and cause chaos in our communities,” Hill said, adding that Trump and Republicans need to vote for specific legislation to pay TSA agents to “get airports back on track.”
On 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 through the day:
- Chicago O’Hare International Airport
- Cleveland Hopkins International Airport
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
- Houston’s William P. Hobby 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 officers have a regular presence at airports that precedes this week’s ICE deployment. CBP is involved in screening arrivals and cargo, while Border Patrol carries out enforcement at some airports.
