Kennedy’s website<\/a> displayed a message warning passengers of potentially lengthy security waits.<\/p>\n“Wait times are subject to rapid change based on passenger volumes and TSA staffing,” the message said, in part.\u00a0“For these reasons, wait time reporting has been temporarily suspended. Please allow for significantly more time.”<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security\u00a0did not agree to an interview request and did not say how long ICE officers would be stationed at airports, instead forwarding\u00a0a statement from Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis that blamed congressional Democrats for the shutdown and credited President Donald Trump with deploying “hundreds” of ICE officers to impacted airports. “This will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimize air travel disruptions,” Bis said.<\/p>\n
The department would not say where the officers were deployed, citing security concerns, but the DHS spokesperson sent with the statement a list of major airports affected by callouts of TSA workers. On Sunday, 37.4% of officers called out of work at Kennedy\u00a0and 21.7% at LaGuardia, according to the department.\u00a0Nationwide, at least 3,450 officers had called out, or 11.76%, the highest rate since the partial federal shutdown began.<\/p>\n
The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA workers, criticized\u00a0Trump\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” the union said in a statement. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints \u2014 skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”<\/p>\n
Trump said Sunday that he would order federal immigration officers\u00a0to airports to assist TSA by guarding exit lanes or checking passenger IDs unless Democrats agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security.\u00a0Speaking to reporters Monday, though, he suggested a potentially broader role for the officers: “they are able now to arrest illegals as they come into the country. That\u2019s very fertile territory, but that\u2019s not why they\u2019re there. They\u2019re really there to help.”<\/p>\n
Funding for the department lapsed Feb. 14, as Democrats refused to fund ICE as well as U.S.\u00a0Customs and Border Protection without changes to their operations. They have demanded that ICE officers get a warrant from a judge before forcefully entering homes, that they not wear masks and that their uniforms bear identifying information.<\/p>\n
ICE has played a prominent, sometimes controversial role in Trump’s efforts to execute what he says will be the largest deportation operation in American history.\u00a0Criticism of the agency grew after immigration officers fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis in January, and on Monday some travelers said they were unhappy to see ICE in the airport.<\/p>\n
“It really reminds me of being in a police state, which I never thought I would see in this country,” said\u00a0Lorin Engquist, 56, of Brooklyn, checking in for a flight out of Kennedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-Harlem), who visited LaGuardia Monday, said his office had\u00a0fielded\u00a0questions from constituents worried they could be targeted by the officers.\u00a0“I think it sets a chilling effect out here that is, I think, unnecessary,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have deployed to patrol\u00a0LaGuardia, Kennedy, Newark and other airports\u00a0across the nation amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,7299,9,24,63,33642,4510],"class_list":["post-173105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-nation","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-trump-immi","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"ICE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774344795_48_image.jpeg\"\/)
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