The federal government has deployed scores of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to O’Hare International Airport in the midst of an ongoing partial government shutdown, and agents were seen Monday milling around the airport terminals.
At least a dozen agents stood at exits throughout the airport, appearing to do very little. Several scrolled on their phones. Others stood and chatted with one another or Transportation Security Administration agents, who are working unpaid.
Despite President Donald Trump on Monday directing ICE officers not to wear face coverings in their work at airports, most at O’Hare wore medical face masks. All wore bulletproof tactical vests. Some were armed.
Brad Hackney looked confused when he passed them after a flight from Lexington, Kentucky.
“They don’t belong here,” he said. “They don’t belong stalking people coming off of planes, going into the airports. There’s no reason for any American to feel threatened traveling throughout the United States. And that’s what they did. It’s just a piece of intimidation.”
Hackney, 47, said the agency has targeted Latinos and argued that airports should be “like a store,” an off-limits spots for the agents.
“It’s pointless,” he said. “It’s just to cause fear and threat to people.”
But Luis Lannaro was unbothered as he came out the same exit from Minneapolis.
“Honestly, I don’t care, as long as they help and keep the line short,” the Brazilian tourist said before a five-hour stop in Chicago.
In a statement, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said DHS planned to deploy about 75 ICE officers to the city’s largest airport beginning on Monday. Those agents would work “across multiple shifts,” Johnson said. The mayor said no ICE agents were expected at Midway International Airport “at this time.”
The move comes as more than 50,000 TSA workers have worked without pay for more than five weeks during a partial government shutdown, according to their union, the American Federation of Government Employees.
That means air travelers throughout the U.S. have faced lengthy security lines as TSA employees call out rather than work without a paycheck.
The unions called for TSA workers to be paid immediately — noting that, in contrast, ICE officers are among the DHS workers who have continued to see paychecks as the partial shutdown drags on.
Two masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stand near a passenger exit area in Terminal 1 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on March 23, 2026, while an airport worker sits. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
While routine funding that is used to pay TSA agents has lapsed, ICE and other immigration enforcement operations are funded with personnel receiving paychecks thanks to Trump’s big tax cuts bill that became law last year. It ballooned the DHS budget for immigration detention and deportation by billions.
At O’Hare, the mayor’s office said travelers have not seen significant delays, and on Monday morning, security lines were not long and appeared to be moving at a normal pace.
DHS says more than 400 TSA officers have quit entirely. Trump said over the weekend he would order ICE agents into U.S. airports unless Democrats agreed to fund DHS.
Chicago’s mayor said he had “concerns” about the deployment of ICE agents at the airport and said his office would “closely monitor” their deployment “to ensure that people, no matter their immigration status, can travel to and from Chicago safely and without harassment from the federal government.”
“In Chicago, we’re going to keep standing on transparency, dignity, and the right to move freely without threat and intimidation by ICE agents,” he said.
The national president of the TSA workers’ union, Everett Kelley of the AFGE, has slammed the decision to use ICE agents in airports, saying they “are not trained or certified in aviation security.”
Johnson said that according to DHS, ICE agents will be performing “non-screening support functions” at O’Hare.
Those tasks include “monitoring exit lanes, making routine passenger announcements (such as reminding travelers to remove liquids from their bags), assisting with queue management, and related activities intended to allow TSA officers to remain focused on passenger and baggage screening,” Johnson said.
TSA staff joked about the newcomer agents. The airport regulars said they were not sure what the federal agents were supposed to be doing — and added that the agents hadn’t shared any details.
In the afternoon, there were no agents at several of the exits where they had been stationed earlier in the day. “I don’t know where they went,” a TSA agent said. Another joked that they were hiding.
In Terminal 3, as a Tribune photojournalist took photos, one agent walked to the other side of the hallway in an apparent effort to avoid the camera. He then returned to his chair, picked it up and carried it behind a TSA agent’s booth. Finally out of sight, he sat down. His partner quickly followed suit.
Meanwhile, TSA agents are “struggling,” said Darrell English, the president of the AFGE Local 777, which represents TSA workers at both O’Hare and Midway airports.
Some are sleeping out of their cars because they don’t have enough fuel to get back and forth to and from work, English said. And the rubber will really hit the road April 1, when rent and mortgage is due again, the union president said. That’s when some TSA workers will have to make a “drastic decision” about whether to stay with their jobs, he said.
Democrats have pledged not to fund DHS unless changes are made to federal immigration enforcement after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good during the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.
That operation followed the administration’s fall crackdown in Chicago, during which immigration agents fatally shot a man in Franklin Park.
Republicans have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, despite an effort by Democrats over the weekend to take up legislation that would pay TSA workers.
“Congressional Democrats have given the President and House Republicans numerous opportunities to fund TSA without restoring ICE funding. As recently as this weekend, they kept turning down the offer,” U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said in a statement. “Republicans in Congress just need to decide if they want to serve the American people more than they want to cater to Trump.”
Republicans argued that legislators need to fund all parts of DHS, not just the TSA.
Lauren Bis, the acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, accused Democrats of putting “the safety, dependability, and ease of our air travel at risk,” in a statement Monday.
“President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted,” Bis said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X Monday that Republicans and Trump “are keeping our airports in chaos and instilling fear in Illinoisans to pass a voter suppression bill — instead of paying our TSA agents.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey pushed back, writing on X that “ICE is already funded by Congress. The shutdown doesn’t touch them,” and accusing the governor’s “buddies” of “punishing Illinoisans at the airport.”
The TSA said almost 12% of TSA agents had called out on Sunday, the highest callout rate of the shutdown. The feds provided callout rates for nine U.S. airports that saw high levels of absences, including Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson and New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong international airports, both of which saw callout rates higher than 40%.
TSA declined to provide Sunday callout percentages for O’Hare and Midway, confirming that Chicago’s airports were not among the top for callouts that day.
It’s not the first time the feds have beset O’Hare — where landside operations are generally run by the city, but airside operations are run by the feds — with federal immigration agents. During Operation Midway Blitz, Border Patrol agents repeatedly descended on a staging lot for ride-share drivers just outside the airport, arresting dozens of people throughout the fall.
The city — which owns the parking lot — attempted to push back against the immigration crackdown there, but its efforts proved futile as Border Patrol agents showed up again and again to arrest gig drivers.
On Monday, Sean Mills of Logan Square sat in baggage claim at O’Hare, across from an unmoving carousel.
The 38-year-old, a regular at ongoing weekend protests outside ICE’s Broadview processing center, said he felt compelled to come to O’Hare and apply his training in documenting federal agents.
“It’s a scare tactic,” Mills said. “It’s to normalize their presence among normal, day-to-day society.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin and The Associated Press contributed.