Why Trump Is Deploying ICE to Airports—and What They’ll Actually Do

President Donald Trump has deployed agents from the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seemingly everywhere—from sanctuary cities to worksites for raids on undocumented communities, even to this year’s Winter Games to help with event security. In a surprise announcement over the weekend, he announced he’d deploy ICE agents to assist airport security operations nationwide amid a standoff in the funding for the Department of Homeland Security that has shut down the government and left Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers unpaid until it can be resolved.

But the Administration hasn’t been clear about what the scope of these agents’ roles at airports will be, even as late as the day before their expected deployment on Monday. There are concerns about their lack of training in airport security and, more broadly, their widely protested enforcement of Trump’s immigration agenda across the country.

Trump, in his Truth Social post on Sunday, said that Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” will be in charge of ICE agents’ deployment to assist TSA workers. Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union Sunday about what ICE agents are expected to do, Homan said he was “working on the plan now of execution” with Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, and Ha Nguyen McNeill, the acting administrator for TSA.

Homan defended ICE’s ability to handle airport security, saying ICE agents “receive a high level of training,” and he added that such agents are already assigned at other American airports for other roles. Homan said ICE agents could man airport exits like TSA officers do to prevent people from coming through them, and he said that the agents should be deployed to airports with the longest waiting lines.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because we’re not trained in that,” Homan said. “But there are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs, and put them in the specialized jobs to help move those lines.”

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Homan said ICE agents can also check identification before entering the screening area, and that they will function as a “force multiplier.” 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, speaking to ABC’s This Week on Sunday, said that the long lines at airports were Democrats’ “leverage” to railroad their agenda and that ICE agents could potentially assist the TSA in reducing those lines. “President Trump’s trying to take that leverage away and not make the American people suffer,” Duffy said. “So, if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, yes, I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Duffy doubled down on ICE agents being adequately trained, saying that these officers run “similar assets” of security machines on the southern border.

TIME has reached out to DHS and the Transportation Department for clarity on what exactly the agents will do. But John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director under President Barack Obama, told CNN that, while he trusts Homan to deploy ICE agents to airports “as minimally intrusive as possible,” TSA agents have unique skillsets and “unique training experiences” that even people even with other law enforcement training would not be able to replicate. He added that ICE’s contributions wouldn’t be that “operationally significant.”

Sandweg added that a new set of problems could arise if the ICE agents take on or even appear to take on immigration enforcement actions in the airports, which Homan did not rule out. “If we start seeing ICE agents checking IDs when people are walking up to the checkpoints, or we start seeing ICE agents making immigration arrests of individuals as they try to board their airplane, we’re going to have a lot of chaos.” 

Democrats, union slam ICE deployment

At the heart of ICE agents’ deployment to airports is the Trump Administration blaming Democrats for a partial government shutdown that began on Feb 14. Democrats have refused to fund DHS without additional guardrails on federal immigration agents, spurred on by the killings of two U.S. citizens by such agents earlier this year. Trump and Republicans have made some concessions, but both parties have failed to find an off-ramp to the stalemate.

Because of the standoff, TSA—comprising almost 65,000 employees, including about 50,000 frontline security officers—was severely affected, causing disruptions at airports now experiencing exacerbated bottlenecks due to spring travel. More than 400 have quit since the shutdown began, DHS told NBC News on Saturday, adding that airports have recorded high callout rates. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) said in a statement responding to ICE deployment that more than 50,000 TSA employees have worked without pay for over five weeks.

A TSA official even warned that some airports may be forced to close if the standoff continues.

“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”

Democratic lawmakers have similarly criticized Trump’s plan to deploy ICE to airports. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted on social media that “untrained ICE agents lurking at our airports is asking for trouble” and could only worsen the situation. He separately posted that Republicans should “get their act together and agree to pay TSA workers.” Republicans have rejected Democrats’ TSA funding bills, while Democrats have rebuffed funding for the entire DHS. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, meanwhile, told CNN Sunday that deploying ICE to airports is “the last thing that the American people need,” as they could potentially “brutalize or in some instances kill” travelers.

Trump wants DHS funding deal tied to voter legislation

Trump said he doesn’t want to cut a deal with Democrats if they block his so-called SAVE America Act that proposes sweeping changes to voter laws—particularly requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship and photo identification to cast ballots in federal elections. Speaking to NewsNation Sunday night by phone, Trump said that ICE agents will be helping out at airports “for as long as it takes.”

Trump told the outlet that Democrats have become more interested in securing a deal since he announced his plan to deploy ICE to airports, while the President reiterated that he would not accept Democrats’ proposed standalone TSA funding measures. “Now that I did this, the Democrats want to make a deal,” Trump told NewsNation. “And I don’t think any deal should be made on this until they approve SAVE America.”
Trump posted on Truth Social hours later that he doesn’t think Republicans “should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,’” adding that passing the election reforms ahead of the upcoming midterms was “far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate.”