hourslong security lines<\/a> that have worsened since the start of the partial government shutdown, which has prompted a spike in TSA employees calling out of work because they\u2019re not being paid.<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s TSA agents covering exits,\u201d Homan said during a CNN interview on Sunday. \u201cCertainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit \u2026 and stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
At JFK Airport earlier this week, a Gothamist reporter observed at least 15 ICE agents milling about in the terminals while news photographers took their photos. Another reporter witnessed a similar operation at LaGuardia Airport. The reporters did not see any of the immigration agents stationed at secured exits as Homan described.<\/p>\n
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis did not answer questions as to whether ICE agents deployed to the airports were responsible for guarding exits. In a statement, she said thousands of TSA officers have been calling out sick since the agency shut down more than a month ago over a congressional funding fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump is taking action \u2014 deploying hundreds of ICE officers, already funded by Congress, to support airports facing the greatest strain,\u201d Bis said. \u201cThis step will strengthen TSA operations, help keep our skies safe and reduce disruptions for the traveling public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murad Awawdeh, of the New York Immigration Coalition, said workers from his nonprofit have also been at the city airports this week and haven\u2019t seen ICE officers do much beyond look at their phones.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe that their deployment to the airports is anything more than them trying to show that they\u2019re trying to help \u2026 and then potentially trying to do more enforcement,\u201d Awawdeh said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing really to report on that other than they\u2019re there and they\u2019re just standing around on their phone,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani shared a number for the city\u2019s Office of Immigrant Affairs and criticized the move to deploy ICE to the airports.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE doesn\u2019t belong at our airports,\u201d Mamdani wrote.<\/p>\n
Figures released by DHS show roughly 37% of TSA workers at JFK called out on Tuesday. At LaGuardia, more than 17% of the TSA workers called out, according to the data.<\/p>\n
Ramsey Khalifeh contributed reporting to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal immigration agents deployed to New York City\u2019s airports this week do not appear to be assisting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-546211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}