Trump Deploys ICE Agents to Airports Amid TSA Staffing Crisis

ICE agents were deployed to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport amid hours-long TSA security lines, the first concrete sign of a White House directive that Border Czar Tom Homan indicated could outlast the funding crisis that triggered it.

President Donald Trump ordered the deployment in a series of Truth Social posts over the weekend. "On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job," Trump wrote. "THEY WILL DO A FANTASTIC JOB. The great Tom Homan is in charge!"

Homan, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," drew a firm line around what ICE agents would actually do. "We're simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don't need their specialized expertise such as screening through the X-ray machine," he said. "Not trained in that, won't do that." He described the assignment as handling "non-significant" tasks: monitoring lines and guarding exits to free up TSA officers for screening duties. Homan said he was coordinating with ICE Director Todd Lyons and TSA officials to finalize a plan by Sunday night, set to take effect Monday morning. Larger airports and those with the longest wait times, which can stretch as long as three hours, would receive priority deployments.

What drew sharper attention was Homan's framing of how long ICE would stay. Asked whether agents would leave once TSA's pay dispute is resolved, he said: "It's not going to change." He told CBS News that ICE would remain assisting TSA "until the airports feel like they are 100%."

The deployment is rooted in a weeks-long impasse between congressional Democrats and Republicans over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA. Lawmakers planned to meet Sunday to continue negotiations, with the standoff entangled in a separate dispute over new guardrails for immigration enforcement.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries used his own CNN appearance to condemn the operation. "The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them," Jeffries said, arguing that ICE agents 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 in highly sensitive situations at airports across the country."

Homan's stated scope keeps ICE clear of X-ray machines and passenger screening. But his insistence that the deployment "is not going to change" raises a question Congress and airport officials will have to answer: what began as a stopgap during a funding fight may be settling into something more permanent.