Trump administration touts plan for ICE at airports amid criticism from union, US Democrats

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump’s border czar said on March 22 that having immigration agents bolster short-staffed Transportation Security Administration teams will speed up airport lines, but the union for TSA workers said that doesn’t solve what they see as the underlying problem of pay.

In appearances on Sunday news shows, US border czar Tom Homan and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel can help with airport security screening, starting on March 23, even though they have not been specifically trained for it.

“When we deploy tomorrow, we’ll have a well thought-out plan to execute,” Mr Homan said on CNN’s State of the Union programme.

Tens of thousands of TSA agents have been working without pay for weeks because of an impasse between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over funding the US Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and TSA.

Mr Trump announced on March 21 that ICE agents would be sent to airports unless Democratic lawmakers agree to fund DHS. Democrats have criticised the department’s immigration operations that have killed US citizens and sparked public outrage, demanding a change in rules.

Some 10 per cent of TSA employees have been absent from work in recent days, with the rate even higher at major airports in Atlanta, New York City and Houston, leading to lengthy lines for passengers trying to get to their gates. Hundreds of TSA agents have simply resigned, according to their labour union and TSA.

“ICE will do the job far better than ever done before!”, the Republican president wrote in a social media post on March 22.

Details of how ICE agents would help with the lines were scant, although Mr Homan told CNN a plan would be in place by the end of the day “to move those lines along.”

Mr Homan and Mr Duffy, in separate interviews, had different ideas about how the ICE agents might be deployed.

Mr Homan said he doubted ICE agents would operate X-ray baggage and passenger screening machines because they did not have experience. Mr Duffy, in contrast, said ICE agents “know how to pat people down, they know how to run the X-ray machines.”

The labour union representing TSA workers criticised Mr Trump’s decision, saying their members spend months in training learning to detect explosives and weapons.

“Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe,” Mr Everett Kelley, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”

Unlike TSA employees, the government has continued to pay ICE agents through a separate funding provision while lawmakers debate whether ICE funding should be tied to new rules and procedures.

Democrats have said new rules are needed after masked ICE agents fatally shot two US citizens, in the streets of Minneapolis earlier in 2026. They had come out to protest or observe Mr Trump’s unprecedented deportation surge in Minnesota.

Mr Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat and the minority leader in the US House of Representatives, told CNN that his caucus is open to a separate funding agreement for TSA employees while lawmakers debate measures to “get ICE under control.” But there has been little movement on an actual deal so far, especially in the Senate.

“We have an obligation to not fund an agency that is acting this lawlessly,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told NBC’s Meet the Press programme. REUTERS