The president did not reveal the airports to which immigration agents could be deployed.
President Donald Trump announced plans to move Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports on Monday to help Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents manage security checkpoints.
“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,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on March 21.
Trump revealed his plans to move ICE agents to airports one day after the Senate failed to advance a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been in a partial shutdown since Feb. 13.
“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” Trump added in a second Truth Social post on Saturday.
Trump confirmed on Sunday that he’s decided to move forward with deploying ICE agents “to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job.”
Trump did not reveal which airports the ICE agents would be deployed to but added that he would order them to immediately arrest “all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”
As lawmakers on Capitol Hill remain at a stalemate, federal employees in the agencies under DHS have been working without pay due to the lapse in federal funding that started in mid-February.
Agencies under the DHS umbrella include TSA, Customs and Border Protection, ICE, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Coast Guard.
Some TSA agents have had to sleep in their cars and go to food banks just to stay afloat, while others called in sick, which has caused hours-long security lines, according to Homeland Security.
There are growing concerns that some airports will have to temporarily close down due to TSA staffing shortages.
By Jacki Thrapp
