ICE Deployed To 13 Airports — But Agents Are Mostly Standing Around As TSA Lines Stretch For Hours

by Gary Leff

ICE has deployed to 13 airports nationwide, ostensibly to relieve TSA of some non-screening duties to allow those employees to focus on screening (since ICE agents themselves haven’t completed legally-required training to do screening themselves). In fact, it appears that ICE agents are largely not relieving TSA from other duties.

Agents have been deployed to Atlanta; Chicago O’Hare; Cleveland; Houston Hobby [when the worst lines are at Intercontinental]; Fort Myers; New Orleans; New York JFK and LaGuardia; Newark; Philadephia; Phoenix; Pittsburgh; San Juan. Sending ICE to San Juan is just trolling.

Here’s ICE at New York JFK terminal 8:

And JFK terminal 5:

Here they are walking around Newark.

And Houston Hobby:

New York LaGuardia has been closed because of the Air Canada Jazz tragedy last night, so there’s no line at TSA. But ICE has been deployed there nonetheless.

In some cases, ICE agents are at least standing at checkpoints (even if they aren’t replacing TSA document checkers).

Bear in mind that ICE agents are law enforcement, while TSA screeners generally are not, and that means they have far broader detention and arrest powers. Law enforcement is needed for these TSA lines, although it’s not clear ICE was the best agency pick for this. They’re being pulled off of immigration enforcement (and in some cases terrorism investigations). Here’s what lines out into a parking garage look like in New Orleans:

Things are pretty ugly in Orlando.

Atlanta is next-level.

With over 11% of TSA screeners calling out from work nationally (versus 2% on a normal day) and over 50% at some airports, lines are backing up. Replacing them would be 4,000 – 5,000 screeners needed. A few hundred ICE agents have deployed and don’t appear to be doing work that frees up any of them, and cannot themselves perform screening duties. So this is all for show.

TSA has real problems. Historically it has been ineffective at its job of finding dangerous objects going through checkpoints. The same agent should not be regulating security and performing the security function – regulating itself – and this is why they’ve been so unaccountable. And the agency has mostly blocked airports from opting for private screeners over time (the way San Francisco, Kansas City, Sarasota and others have). Where that’s been allowed, the airports themselves have little say in the contractors that are assigned.

Still, holding TSA hostage over an immigration policy fight is insane and literally both sides are doing it. Democrats won’t fund the Department of Homeland Security without immigration enforcement reforms (some of which are eminently reasonable). Republicans haven’t allowed funding for TSA – or even ‘all of DHS except immigration, which is already being paid’. And so passengers are being ransomed over policy proxy fights, which also include the SAVE Act (voter eligibility) in addition to immigration. The stupidity must end.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. This is on all but one Democrat Senator. Take notes and vote appropriately..To those of you that travel out of DCA, let those idiots know your feelings as they bypass the lines.

  2. Insane that they can skip the lines, especially once some Congresswomen are likely security risks, if you ask me.

  3. ICE will not make an impact on wait times, they are not trained to screen. Just like so many other things out of the Trump administration this is all hat and no cattle.

  4. Looks like a good week to reschedule if flying into or out of any of the airports in question.

  5. @Coffee Please
    Dems have offered to carve out money for TSA but the Repubs have said no because their supreme leader says no.

  7. Anyone that says that this is because of the democrats is just wrong – they carved out funding for the TSA in their proposal and even offered to pass a separate bill just funding the TSA while they negotiate on the rest of the proposal. But the republicans rejected that.

  8. The Democrats have repeatedly introduced bills to fund TSA (along with FEMA), and Republicans have rejected them all. On their latest attempt, Republican leadership seemed willing, but TRUMP said “no”; so they voted against it again.

  9. Maybe the ICE agents can catch that flight attendant who tried to enter the US illegally when she was thrown 100m from the airplane that crashed?

  10. Noem, before she found a new job, threatened to shut down TSA-pre-check. Pre-check made the lines go faster with the same amount of staffing. The administration wanted to slow the lines to bully the Democrats.

    That should tell you all that you need to know about the politics of this issue. Rather than negotiating with Democrats who are concerned about abuses by ICE personnel, Trump & his lackeys want to figuratively “hold a gun” to the American public to get the Democrats to cave. Trump has made it clear that he does not want any restrictions on his power to rule the country. ICE “assisting” TSA at airports screening is just another step towards making ICE the De facto national police force. I wonder if many GOP voters actually study history or if they just don’t care so long as they are the ones in brown shirts?

  11. LOL: This site can put out another article on this topic every day. Primal scream therapy is said to be very therapeutic. To repeat, very funny.

  12. If I was a Dem in Congress and cared nothing about anything but my anti-ICE agenda, I’d offer to fund TSA, Cost Guard, etc. If the Reps say no, I’d point out the publics’ TSA problems are all the Reps fault. Thus, to solve the TSA problem, I have more leverage on other issues. If the Reps agreed to TSA funding, I’d claim victory, and then I’d negotiate in the baddest of bad faith you’ve ever seen. Both sides are playing politics, in DC, none the less.

  13. @ Coffee Please – you’re just STUPID and IGNORANT!!! Does your daddy call yo mama sis??

  15. Explain to me how mall-cop-wannabes are going to accelerate security screening. I’m at JFK T4 now and those security lines look ugly.

    As for funding the gov’t they ca keep it shut down until ICE and their gestapo tactics are reigned in. I’ll deal with the impact. Honestly, I’m more inconvenienced by gas prices than I am TSA lines. Neither of which are the fault of Dear Leader if you believe @Coffee Please

  16. I predict this stalemate will go on for quite a while longer. This is because both parties’ primary electorates have extremely strong feelings about ICE that are diammetrically opposed to one another and uncompromisable. An inconveniently long airport line for the subset of the election that regularly flies by air is seen by members of Congress as preferrable to losing their seat in a primary.

    Democratic primary voters view ICE as a group of Gestapo-like thugs and would view any vote to fund the agency as tantamount to partisan treason. Any Democratic Senator who votes for it will likely not make it past their next primary.

    On the Republican side the MAGA voters are sick of decades of Republican congressmen and presidents being “squishy” on immigration (going back to Reagan signing the amnesty compromise bill in 1986) and will likely view yet another budget compromise as spineless caving.

    Since neither side is willing to cave, this situation will continue on for a while. I think the logjam finally breaks when either the Senate Republicans steamroll the Senate Democrats by carving out an exception to the filibuster and pushing it through or a group of soon-to-be-retiring-anyway Senate Democrats cave in exchange for some token restrictions on ICE conduct (like requiring judicial warrants and placing limits on mask-wearing by agents). Until then we will have to plan around the long lines.

  17. @This comes to mind- Democrats in Congress have offered to fund TSA. Trump rejected a ‘fund everything but ICE’ compromise (even though ICE agents continue getting paid now)

  18. @Gary Leff From a Game Theory perspective (setting aside partisan loyalties or which side you or I personally prefer) Trump would be strategically foolish to agree to an “everything but ICE” deal. The airport lines are his main piece of leverage, since the rest of the budget aside from DHS was already passed. If only ICE was left the Democrats would never agree to a deal he finds acceptable.

  19. @Steven – the deal involved funding ICE through reconciliation, he’d only need 50 votes in the Senate and Republicans hold 53 seats

  20. I just listened to Cruz. Before I hear groans, I remind you that he is actually in the Senate negotiating and I am not. Please do not throw stones at me.

    Cruz said that Democrats were not likely to move from the stance, defund ICE in exchange for the rest of DHS. He said that they are willing to burn it all down to accommodate their base. His solution is to accept the Democrats proposal to defund ICE in return for funding DHS. Then, as soon as it is approved, turn around and fund ICE for a decade through reconciliation which only requires 50 votes plus the Vice President.

    Again, please don’t snark me, I am just reporting what I just heard.

  21. Remember when some Attorney General decided to randomly reinterpret the Antideficiency Act, thus inventing shutdowns out of thin air?

    The Antideficiency Act needs to be fixed to get rid of these awful shutdowns – forever.

  22. Long TSA lines should not be “leverage” for any side. And funding for a militant group with zero accountability and unlimited budget because ma teevee says they’re “mostly” arresting criminals should not be a deal-breaker. Eventually a coward Democrat will step up for the globalists and help pass some compromise but let’s not pretend Republicans are the ones that suddenly care about Americans.

  23. This was the first day so I am not surprised that the TSA supervisors haven’t figured out how to deploy the ICE agents to speed the process yet. Give it some time and see if the deployment stays the same. Maybe the TSA supervisors need permission from their superiors to use ICE agents in certain jobs like crowd control and inspection conveyor belt loading. That way their jobs wouldn’t be threatened.

  24. @Parker

    Not a peep from you and many others when Dementia Joe signed executive orders on day one of his administration declaring war on the petroleum industry. Fuel prices went up that day and never returns to where they were just before Trump left office. All of you bad mouthing ICE should be required to sponsor a criminal illegal family. Any comment on what happened in Chicago? Not a peep from Brandon Johnson and somehow Fat Pritzker tries to blame Trump.

  25. They could replace TSA at exit points. That’s just a person making sure no one comes back through an exit point. Why can’t they take IDs? It would take what 5 minutes to train someone on that machine you stick your ID through?

  26. @George Romey – Agreed. Putting aside partisan politics, what I find most unfathomable about this situation is the outlandish claim that it takes four to six months to “properly and fully train” a TSA agent, especially given the well-documented, spectacular failure rates of that agency. Training anyone with a GED or better on how to use modern ID technology does not seem as if it should be very difficult or time consuming at all. I wonder how motivated the two agencies are going to be to truly cooperate in this situation.

  27. If I really wanted to pay people to just hang around and jerk off at the airport, I could get a better deal grabbing dudes off the subway

  28. Gary,
    Delta has just said they will not allow special privileges or line cutting by members of Congress until this mess is ended.

    This is something the entire industry needs to adopt.

    and then cancel their tickets to leave Washington until this mess is fixed.

  29. ICE JUST got assigned to these airport locations.
    It will probably take at least a few days for them to transition to do their best work.
    Expecting all TSA delays to be immediately resolved is HIGHLY UNREALISTIC.

    I realize some of you have been brainwashed to hate on ICE.
    The Lying Legacy Media throws out the psyop bait and many of you fall for it Every Single Time !.

  30. @This comes to mind: As I previously stated, that’s EXACTLY what the Democrats have been doing! They’ve put forward multiple bills to fund just TSA, as well as multiple bills to fund TSA, FEMA, and Coast Guard. Republicans have rejected every single one. On the latest, Republicans seemed willing, but Trump said “no” so they rejected it as well. This is gradually seeping into the public consciousness.

    @Tim Dunn: Amen!

    @OnePatriot77: The head of ICE has admitted ICE agents are not trained to do the screening TSA does; they’re already doing their “best work”. Expecting this to resolve the delays EVER is HIGHLY UNREALISTIC..

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