{"id":360840,"date":"2026-03-23T12:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T12:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/360840\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T12:11:09","slug":"ice-agents-to-work-at-us-airports-from-today-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/360840\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice agents to work at US airports from today \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Homan<\/a>, the White House border tsar, has confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice)<\/a> agents would be deployed to US <\/a>airports from today, casting the operation largely as an effort to ease long lines that have caused frustration among travellers during one of the busiest travel seasons.<\/p>\n

Ice personnel, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations, are planning to be at 14 airports. The airports span the country, including Kennedy and LaGuardia in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix and Newark, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

The agents are expected to conduct tasks to free up Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents to handle processing travellers, according to an official from the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the location of Ice agents.<\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump announced the measure Saturday, first as a threat aimed at pressuring congressional Democrats to agree to a deal to fund the department of homeland security (DHS), which includes TSA, and then as an aggressive operation. He said on social media that agents would \u201cdo security like no one has ever seen before,\u201d which would include \u201cthe immediate arrest of all illegal immigrants who have come into our Country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview on CNN\u2019s State of the Union on Sunday, Homan said that his agency was drawing up plans for deployment and stressed that Ice agents would help support security officials whose ranks have thinned as thousands have gone without pay amid a partial government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a work in progress, but we will be at airports tomorrow, helping TSA move those lines along,\u201d Homan said.<\/p>\n

The department of homeland security said in a statement on Sunday night that the deployment was necessary because of long lines for screening passengers, and it placed the blame on Democrats. But it did not give details about what agents would do at the airports.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the Democrat shutdown, president Trump is using every tool available to help American travellers who are facing hours long lines at airports across the country \u2013 especially during this spring break and holiday season that is very important for many American families,\u201d the statement said, adding: \u201cThis will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimise air travel disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the deployment less than 24 hours away, administration officials apparently have not nailed down many details. Homan said that \u201chis opinion\u201d was that agents would concentrate on airports with long wait times at security, prioritising ones with lines of about three hours. He said that agency heads were still discussing how many agents to deploy, how quickly to deploy them and to where.<\/p>\n

He said more concrete plans would be made Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we deploy them more, we\u2019ll have a well-thought-out plan to execute,\u201d Homan said.<\/p>\n

Airports around the country have been smothered with passengers over the past weeks, hit with the combination of the shutdown and heavy spring break travel. At LaGuardia Airport in New York on Sunday, the wait in the line at TSA checkpoints was as long as three hours.<\/p>\n

Sarah Estes (41), a nurse from Dallas visiting for what she called a \u201cgirls\u2019 trip,\u201d said the airport website had estimated a 20-minute wait for TSA PreCheck. But after they arrived, she said, they were told it would take at least two and a half hours.<\/p>\n

Estes said she had conflicting thoughts about using Ice at the airports.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t trust those people,\u201d she said. \u201cSo how can I trust them to help out at the airport? But the airports do need help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homan noted that Ice agents were already working in airports, doing immigration enforcement and conducting investigations into reports of criminal activity such as smuggling. He also said that the Ice agents \u2013 who are still being paid while TSA agents are not \u2013 are also \u201cwell trained\u201d in security and identification.<\/p>\n

But he indicated that the bulk of their work would be to cover exits and other areas that TSA workers are now staffing in order to free up agents to do screenings and other functions to help reduce lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about helping TSA do their mission, and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can, while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don\u2019t need their specialised expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, blasted Trump\u2019s idea on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last thing the American people need is for untrained Ice agents to be deployed at airports across the country potentially to brutalise or to kill them,\u201d he said during an interview on State of the Union, referring to the killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis in January.<\/p>\n

Mike Gayzagian, a TSA officer at Boston Logan International Airport and the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2617, which represents TSA employees across New England, said he was unsure whether ICE agents would show up to airports in his region Monday. If they did, he said, they were not likely to be of much help, especially if they were stationed at exits as Homan suggested.<\/p>\n

Gayzagian said the administration\u2019s move shifted attention from the larger issue at hand: \u201cNone of this would be happening if Congress had just simply decided to pay us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Johnny Jones, a TSA officer at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and a secretary-treasurer with the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing nearly 50,000 TSA officers, said stationing Ice agents at airports would \u201cbe a distracting scenario to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Ice agents\u2019 presence could make airports less safe because of the widespread public anger at immigration officers\u2019 recent conduct. He added that placing paid immigration agents next to unpaid TSA agents would inflame frustrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we want is a paycheck,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe don\u2019t need all these optics.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2026 The New York Times Company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Homan, the White House border tsar, has confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents would be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,66408,43,137064,40,38,41,39,90],"class_list":["post-360840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-ice-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-news","tag-tom-honan","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}