Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel began to deploy at airports across the country Monday as part of an effort to manage delays at security checkpoints.
Philadelphia is among 14 airports ICE personnel are deploying to, White House border czar Tom Homan told reporters Monday. Other cities include Pittsburgh; Newark, N.J.; Chicago; Atlanta; New Orleans; Houston; Phoenix; and two airports in New York City — John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia, where a collision between an airplane and a fire truck shut down operations through Monday afternoon.
At issue is a partial government shutdown, which has led wait times at airports to balloon as Transportation Security Administration workers miss paychecks and call out from work.
ICE agents were spotted at Hartsfield—Jackson Atlanta International in Atlanta Monday morning, where passengers were encouraged to arrive at least four hours early. A few airports, including Louis Armstrong International in New Orleans and Phoenix Sky Harbor International in Phoenix, announced ICE personnel would be on hand.
There was no sign ICE was present in Philadelphia as of Monday afternoon.
A PHL spokesperson directed inquiries to TSA and the Department of Homeland Security, which issued a statement Sunday night saying the government was “using every tool available to help American travelers” as Easter and spring break near.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Speaking to reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., Monday, President Donald Trump said the deployment was to support TSA and reduce wait times. But he also expected ICE agents to detain and arrest undocumented immigrants they encounter at the airports.
“That’s why the Democrats are going crazy,” Trump said. “[ICE] loves it because they’re able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That’s very fertile territory.”
Three checkpoints in Philadelphia have been temporarily closed due to TSA staffing shortages, though the terminals themselves remain open. Over 24% of the roughly 900 TSA workers in Philadelphia called out Sunday, according to data provided by DHS, the most since the partial shutdown began last month.
While long lines in Philadelphia have backed up travelers in the early-morning hours as the checkpoints open, wait times have remained normal during the day, according to the airport’s security checkpoint live tracker.
Around noon Monday, security operations at Terminal A moved swiftly with just a trickle of travelers. Wait times for TSA PreCheck hovered around one to three minutes, while general wait times remained one to six minutes.
City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, one of the authors of pending city legislation aimed at curtailing ICE operations in the city, said in a statement that sending ICE agents to airports “doesn’t make anyone safer.”
“ICE agents aren’t trained properly for their jobs, let alone for those of the TSA,” said Brooks, a member of the progressive Working Families Party. “This doesn’t help with airport wait times. This is about Trump threatening the American people with ICE agents because he’s not getting his way in Washington, D.C.”
Speaking on CNN Sunday, Homan said he had no concerns about placing ICE agents into airport roles without specific training, despite high-profile incidents across the country in recent months, including the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January — Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
CNN’s Dana Bash pressed Homan on the rapid timeline.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because they’re not trained for that,” Homan said. “But there are certain parts of security that TSA’s doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs to help move those lines.”
But in an appearance on ABC Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to contradict Homan about what ICE agents would be doing.
“TSA agents are law enforcement. They know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines because they are under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy said. “So if we can bring in other assets and tools to assist TSA to get rid of these lines, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.”
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents of TSA officers, condemned the plan.
“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Kelley said in a statement Sunday. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that.”
District Attorney Larry Krasner encouraged people to send reports of any misconduct to his office.
“We’ve already seen what happens when you take … ICE and you put them somewhere they are not trained to be, where they don’t have the skills to do the work that is actually helpful,” Krasner said.
At around 2 p.m. Monday, Cadence Gay, 21, waited in the overflow TSA line in Philadelphia’s Terminal D behind rows of people snaking through the security area. He had an about 30-minute wait ahead of him before he could head to the gate for his 8:30 p.m. flight to Denver and return to his home in Cheyenne, Wyo., following a short visit to the Philly area for a volleyball tournament.
Gay, an Army National Guard member, said ICE assisting TSA agents in the airport would “definitely scare people.” But he had confidence they could assist without causing too much disruption if they remain focused.
“If they do their jobs correctly and handle situations correctly it shouldn’t have anything wrong go down,” Gay said. “People understand that they’re just doing their jobs just like them going to the office nine to five.”
Another deadline coming this week
TSA agents are set to miss another paycheck Friday if Congress can’t reach a deal to fund DHS.
Friday also happens to be last day the House and Senate are scheduled to be in session before lawmakers take a two-week break.
“I can’t see us taking a break here in the next week if DHS isn’t funded,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told reporters last week.
On Monday, Trump rejected a potential bipartisan deal that would have provided full funding to DHS, with the exception of ICE, which Democrats have refused to fund without reforms. Thune presented the deal to Trump Sunday, but the president turned it down, according to Punchbowl News.
“Sending ICE agents into our airports won’t solve anything,” said U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.). “Only fully funding TSA will.”
If TSA agents miss another paycheck, enough could call out from work to force the closure of some airports, Duffy warned.
“This is going to look like child’s play, what’s happening right now,” Duffy said on CNBC Thursday. “You’re going to see small airports, I believe, shut down.”
Trump courts controversy with use of ICE
The airport deployments are the latest way the Trump administration has used ICE, Border Patrol, and Homeland Security officers in a controversial manner, including surges into cities and states run by Democrats.
During the Winter Olympics, protests erupted in Milan, Italy, around the news ICE officers were being sent to the country to provide security for the U.S. delegation. Demonstrators rejected the ICE presence, even though the division operating in Italy was different from the one that’s been frequently criticized in the United States.
While it’s ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, called ERO, that Trump has aggressively deployed in the United States, the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations division investigates crimes such as human trafficking, narcotics sales, and financial fraud.
Acting director Todd Lyons told a U.S. House panel the agency, specifically HSI, would be part of the security presence for World Cup games in the United States — a move that has already provoked international backlash, Axios noted.
The United States will host 78 games, while Canada and Mexico host 13 each. Six games will be played at Lincoln Financial Field in South Philly in June and July.
This month, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow asked City Council to formally oppose any role for ICE in that city during the World Cup, saying the agency’s presence could “create fear” among visitors.
Staff writers Sam Janesch, Jillian Kramer, and Anna Orso contributed to this article.