ICE agents were deployed to airports around the country on Monday, including at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental and William P. Hobby Airports, after nearly 500 TSA agents quit due to not being paid during the shutdown.
“TSA is extremely grateful to the patriotic men and women of ICE who have deployed to airports that are facing a high number of callouts because of the Democrats’ shutdown,” Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement.
“After receiving standard TSA training curriculum, ICE officers are guarding entrances and exits, assisting with logistics, doing crowd control, and verifying identification using TSA equipment and standard operating procedures. The more support we have available, the more efficiently TSA can focus on their highly specialized screening roles to efficiently get airport security lines moving faster.”
DHS did not specifically detail ICE activity at Bush and Hobby airports. The Chronicle has reached out for more information.
Wait times at Bush Airport’s Terminal E fluctuated throughout the morning on Thursday, reaching as long as 4 hours at times.
Major events in the city, like CERAWeek and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, are driving an increase in travel at a time when 39.2% of TSA agents have called out at Bush Airport, while 31.7% have called out at Hobby, according to DHS.
This is a developing story.