At 1:15 a.m., Laney Brinkerhoff entered the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday to make her flight back to Salt Lake City. She finally made it through security at 5:22 a.m., barely making her 6 a.m. flight.
Even in the middle of the night, Brinkerhoff said the line was “wrapped around baggage claim,” but when she boarded her flight, she looked on social media to see that people were now lined up outside the airport building. “Because it was so early in the morning, emotions and tensions were just high,” she said, “Two or three times, people came and cut to get in line with their friends, and other travelers would yell at them. I’m like, ‘holy crap, is there a fight about to break out right now?’”
She told the Deseret News that people noticed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the airport as she was passing through the TSA checkpoint.
Funding for DHS lapsed on Feb. 17 due to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over federal immigration reform, leaving TSA agents to work without pay for weeks. As of Sunday, more than 3,500 TSA agents did not show up to work. “Many TSA officers are facing extraordinary financial hardship—forcing them to call out of work and take on side jobs to support their families,“ DHS posted on social media. ”Democrats are hurting Americans—and they don’t care."
Congressional Democrats blame their Republican colleagues.
On March 20, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “America will see the matter crystal clear: which Senators WANT to pay TSA workers and end the chaos at our airports, and which Senators are going to BLOCK TSA funding yet again.” A day later, he posted on social media again and said the GOP Senate “would rather hold TSA hostage to try to force billions more for an unrestrained, out of control ICE. Despicable.”
Trump calls in ICE
Trump’s solution drew the expected partisan reaction when, on Sunday, he said ICE agents would be brought in to help with the airport security chaos:
“If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before! The Fascist Democrats will never protect America, but the Republicans will. Just like the Radical Left allowed millions of Criminals to pour into our Country through their ridiculous and dangerous Open Border Policy, the Republicans closed it all down, and we now have the Strongest Border in American History. Likewise, I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!”
When asked by the press whose idea it was to use ICE agents at airports, Trump said it was his.
“Mine ... you know the story of the paper clip? 182 years ago, a man discovered the paper clip. It was so simple, and everybody that looked at it said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ ICE was my idea.”
White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that ICE agents “receive a high level of training” and that many are already stationed at airports across the country to conduct investigations. “We’re talking about security options, and these officers are well trained in security, and they’re well trained in identification,” he added. “We’re going to do what we can to help TSA move those people to the line.”
Though not every federal official views Trump’s deployment of ICE as a solution.
“More than 50,000 TSA employees have worked without pay for over five weeks. Hundreds have quit. And Washington’s answer isn’t to pay them. It’s to send ICE agents to do their jobs.“ Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the exclusive union representative of TSA officers, said in a statement.
“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” he continued. “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. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one."
Homan told CNN that agents were deployed to 14 airports across the country so far.