Hmmmm … Are European immigrants scrutinized so severely?
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been deployed to more than a dozen airports across the U.S. after President Donald Trump’s threats to mobilize federal law enforcement during a partial government shutdown that has thinned the ranks of airport workers and snarled security lines.
Armed ICE officers wearing military-style vests moved into at least 13 major transit hubs on Monday, including airports in New York City, Houston, and Atlanta, to supplement Transportation Security Administration personnel who have been working without pay while Congress is deadlocked on a funding deal for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA as well as ICE and other immigration agencies.
What exactly ICE is doing there remains unclear. Trump says the agents are relieving TSA workers, performing immigration arrests, and providing “security like no one has ever seen before” — but ICE agents cannot perform TSA screening duties, making it unclear what impact, if any, the deployment of armed federal officers into American airports will have on wait times plaguing security checkpoints.
ICE agents, who are still being paid during the partial shutdown, were seen standing around inside several airport terminals on Monday while travelers once again faced hours-long wait times to get through security lines.
“If that’s not enough, we’ll bring in the National Guard,” Trump told reporters Monday. “ICE loves it because they’re able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. It’s very fertile territory. But that’s not why they’re there. They’re there to help.”
Trump’s idea, which appears to have come from a right-wing radio show, has drawn mixed reactions from airline passengers who are already on edge, while civil rights groups and unions representing federal workers argue that ICE’s presence only injects unnecessary fear and potential violence into an already-tense environment.
“I guess it’s a good use of our federal money,” one traveler at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport told CBS News. “But other than that, I mean, hopefully, we don’t get any bad situations from it.”
Tom Charging Hawk told The New York Times that he was “rattled” by the presence of ICE agents inside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. He said his colleagues dropped out of attending a conference because of “ICE and security weirdness.”
“How are they going to keep us safe?” a passenger at Newark Liberty International Airport worker asked CNN.
Travelers are feeling for TSA agents who are entering another pay period without a paycheck but are questioning whether ICE — after months of scrutiny into officers’ lethal use of force and the president’s violent mass deportation efforts — is merely being used as a political tool to bully Trump’s critics.
“Are they going to handle it the way it’s supposed to be handled?” Lamar Weaver, who was traveling from Philadelphia International Airport, told CBS News. “Do they have the emotional intelligence to do it the way it’s supposed to be done?”
Roughly 60,000 TSA workers are caught in the middle of a congressional stalemate over Homeland Security’s budget, which saw a massive injection of taxpayer cash for immigration enforcement under a separate measure last year.
TSA workers, considered essential staff, have been showing up to work without a paycheck over the last month, but workers are calling out sick, and roughly 400 employees have quit. More than a third of TSA officers at Atlanta’s airport — the busiest in the U.S., handling roughly 100 million passengers annually — have called out sick.
Most airports are no longer displaying TSA wait times during the shutdown, but are instead advising travelers to show up at least four hours before their flights.
Democratic members of Congress have proposed separate funding bills to keep TSA running while lawmakers hammer out guardrails for federal immigration enforcement under DHS, but Republicans have rejected the deals.
The White House and Trump’s allies insist Democrats are the problem, and the president is now suggesting that he is no longer interested in reaching a funding deal at all unless Democrats vote with Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping bill to overhaul elections and further block trans Americans from public life — completely separate from the DHS debate.
The president said the SAVE Act, not funding TSA to end the weeks-long crisis, is “far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate.”
TSA officer Darrell English, president of Chicago’s chapter of the American Federation of Government Workers, which represents TSA workers, said he’s “unaware” what role ICE is playing inside airports.
“I can’t see them doing anything as far as screening procedures, so it might be limited as far as what they can do,” he told CNN.
The union’s national president, Everett Kelley, said TSA workers “have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe.”
“They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be,” Kelley said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the agency expects that any ICE agents assigned to New York-area airports “will be appropriately trained and focused on supporting screening operations.”
“I don’t [know] what their purpose is,” Newark airport worker Tonya Johnson told The New York Times. “They’re just standing there, and they’re in the way.”
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Trump says ICE will go maskless at airports
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Mar 24, 2026 @ 04:43:48
This is a well-presented and thought-provoking piece that captures a complex situation with clarity. I appreciate how you’ve highlighted multiple perspectives—from government intent to public reaction—without losing the focus on the real impact on travelers and workers.
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Mar 24, 2026 @ 07:28:17
Thanks again for your well stated comment. The Independent is a great source.
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