Trump Announces Plan to Use ICE as Airport Security While DHS Shutdown Drags On

President Donald Trump announced over the weekend that he is deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to assist with security at airports starting Monday, part of an effort to lessen rapidly increasing wait times during the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

The move was confirmed Sunday morning by border czar Tom Homan, who told CNN’s Dana Bash that he and other officials were actively coming up with a plan for how to reassign the federal immigration agents just hours before those agents were set to show up at airports across the country.

“We’ll put together a plan today, and we’ll execute it tomorrow,” Homan said.

When asked about whether ICE personnel would need additional training to assist Transportation Security Administration agents with their duties, Homan said that immigration officers already receive “high-level training” that would qualify them for certain airport security assignments.

“Certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit,” he added. “Stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines.”

Details on the administration’s plan remain vague — Homan said officials were still deciding whether ICE agents would be assisting with passenger screening and that he did not know yet how many federal officers or airports would be impacted by the changes. “That‘s going based on discussions we‘re having today,” he said.

When asked if the ICE agents would also be conducting immigration enforcement while helping TSA, Homan replied, “We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time. It’s not going to change.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday morning that the move was intended to remove Democrats’ leverage — long airport lines — while DHS funding talks proceed.

“TSA agents are law enforcement. They know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines because they are under Homeland Security with TSA. So if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, I think that makes a lot of sense,” Duffy said.

Democrats bristled at the idea of immigration agents being reassigned to airports, suggesting that the changes would do little to ease ballooning wait times and make travelers less safe in the process.

“We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself. These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have, for the most part, let alone deploying them in close exposure and highly sensitive situations at airports across the country,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The president’s plan comes at a sensitive moment in the ongoing discussions over how to fund DHS, which has been shut down for over a month.

Democrats have proposed funding for all agencies other than ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Though Republicans initially balked at the offer, some Republican senators — particularly Sen. Ted Cruz — are warming to the idea of funding DHS’s non-immigration agencies while congressional leaders negotiate over immigration enforcement reforms.

On Saturday the Senate voted 41-49, largely along party lines, to kill a procedural measure championed by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that would have funded TSA.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican who recently left the party to turn independent, told CNN that Trump’s plan to reassign immigration agents to airports is “a very temporary and not ideal solution.”

“I think there are common-sense reforms that both sides can support, but having an unfunded Department of Homeland Security at a moment when we have this heightened threat environment in the United States, it is absolutely unacceptable,” he said.