ICE is at U.S. airports during the travel chaos: What agents are and aren’t doing

Joy Malbon looks at the impact on U.S. airports as TSA agents continue to work without pay amid the partial government shutdown.

Across some of the busiest U.S. airports this week, groups of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surveyed what felt like never-ending security lines, some directing confused travellers or handing out water, while others stood silently with their thumbs tucked into the sides of their tactical vests.

Painful travel delays have resulted from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security shutdown tied to a dispute over immigration enforcement tactics. On Monday, ICE – an agency whose tactics are at the center of the funding standoff – deployed hundreds of agents to 14 airports as the Trump administration seeks to ease disruptions.

Flyers have faced hourslong waits and lines snaking out of airports as hundreds of TSA employees have quit and thousands more have called out of work after going weeks without pay.

But while the ICE agents – who are being paid – have been spotted in Atlanta, New York, Houston, Chicago and other cities, officials have said they are limited in what duties they can perform: They are not trained, for example, to operate the understaffed security checkpoints that are often the source of delays.

Instead, White House border czar Tom Homan said they will assist with simpler tasks, ideally freeing up more TSA employees to perform critical and specialized security work.

Under TSA protocols, ICE agents are helping operate the credential authentication machine at the travel document checker, acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said Wednesday.

An ICE agent was seen alongside a TSA officer checking IDs at John F. Kennedy International Airport late Wednesday afternoon.

When CNN asked the TSA officer if they were training ICE agents, they said yes.

Additionally, ICE agents are now guarding entrances and exits and doing crowd control after receiving standard TSA training, DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.

“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,” she said.

Wait times remain unpredictable as the shutdown continues into its sixth week: Some have dropped dramatically after peak Monday travel fuelled exceptional wait times. After seeing three-hour waits on Monday, passengers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport made it through Tuesday in less than 45 minutes.

But travellers at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport still languished in four-hour lines Tuesday. And lines at LaGuardia Airport in New York stretched well over an hour. The airport has shouldered a backlog of passengers after shutting down for hours Sunday night following a fatal collision between a plane and a fire truck.

As travellers and CNN crews have observed federal agents roving through several airports, it was at times unclear what tasks they were assigned to carry out. But Homan said more airports could see ICE agents in the coming days. Here’s what we know:

ICE will allow TSA to focus on security screenings, Homan says

Some airports have been forced to dramatically cut down on the number of security checkpoints as an increasing number of TSA employees haven’t shown up to work.

At least 480 TSA officers have quit as of Wednesday and more than 3,000 – amounting to about 11 per cent of the agency’s workforce – had called out of work as of Tuesday, according to DHS.

At Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest passenger airport, about 37 per cent of TSA workers called out on Tuesday. Similar numbers were reported at George Bush Intercontinental. More than a third also called out at airports in New York and New Orleans on Tuesday.

While ICE agents are not trained to perform security screenings, Homan said they could relieve TSA employees of tasks such as monitoring exits and crowd control, and allow them to be redirected to specialized screening work.

“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise, such as screening through the X-ray machine,” Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.

Homan pointed out ICE in airports is not new. They “are assigned at many airports across the country already,” where they perform criminal investigations and immigration enforcement, he said.

John Pistole, a former TSA administrator and former FBI deputy director, said agents may also provide a more conspicuous security presence to deter criminals who may hope to take advantage of the chaos. He noted increased safety concerns amid the war in Iran.

“Hopefully they could be a visible deterrent to a potential terrorist who may want to go in and make a name for themselves” while all eyes are on U.S. airports, Pistole said.

While major airports have their own police forces, these agencies may be “stretched thin” by airport crowds, Pistole added. In Atlanta, city police officers who were working at the airport Monday told CNN their days off had been canceled and they have been working 12-hour shifts.

Agents’ roles aren’t clear to onlookers

As U.S. President Donald Trump announced Saturday afternoon that he wanted ICE in airports, DHS officials raced to formulate a plan for deployment. And as agents arrived at airports Monday morning, their roles sometimes seemed unclear to onlookers.

On Wednesday, Trump said ICE is helping at airports because it’s “rehabbing a fake image.”

“In addition to what they are supposed to be doing, they are helping people with bags, even picking up and cleaning areas. They are so proud to be there!” Trump said on Truth Social about ICE agents.

In the Atlanta airport, ICE had a constantly visible presence but did not appear to be helping with check-ins or directing crowds, CNN’s Ryan Young said. A CNN producer saw one group of ICE agents apparently spend several hours mainly talking among themselves, wandering the floor and getting something to eat.

At George Bush Intercontinental, “They’ve been kind of standing around the edges, clearly not involved in helping process the thousands of passengers trying to make their way through here,” CNN’s Ed Lavandera reported Monday. “It’s not exactly clear how they’re helping, how they’re alleviating the pressure that this airport is under.”

The Houston Airport System has “reassigned hundreds of employees from across our organization – from finance to IT to maintenance – and more to help manage lines and assist travellers,” director of aviation Jim Szczesniak said.

On Tuesday, ICE agents at the Houston airport were passing out water bottles to exhausted travellers in security lines.

Melissa Dunlop, who was heading with her son on a college tour, said she was “happy to see them.”

Immigration enforcement is still on the table

Though ICE agents will be stepping into unfamiliar roles by assisting travellers, they will not be leaving immigration enforcement duties at the door, Homan said.

“We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time,” Homan told CNN Sunday. “Is that going to change? It’s not going to change.”

Trump said Monday that federal immigration officers will conduct arrests of undocumented immigrants, but hedged it is not their priority while deployed.

“They love it, because they’re able to arrest illegals as they come into the country. That’s very fertile territory, but that’s not why they’re there; they’re really there to help,” Trump told reporters.

ICE has previously conducted immigration arrests at airports. Just a day before ICE agents were sent to aid TSA, two people were arrested by federal agents at San Francisco International Airport. DHS said the pair was in the US illegally and had a 2019 order of removal.

At the behest of Trump, agents have been forgoing the masks they often wear to shield their identities when detaining people on the streets. Among the points of dispute over DHS funding is whether immigration agents should be prohibited from wearing masks.

Trump on Monday said he supports agents masking, but believed it was not an “appropriate look” for interacting with people at airports.

“For purposes of the airport, I’ve requested that they take off the mask,” Trump said. “And I believe they are willing to do that.”

TSA union leaders express skepticism, demand pay

Leaders of the TSA workers’ union have been skeptical of ICE’s presence in airports this week, saying their presence does not relieve mounting TSA officer frustrations. TSA officers will miss their second full paycheck this weekend if Congress cannot reach a deal to fund DHS.

Instead of paying TSA agents, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees said, “the administration sent ICE agents to airports as replacement workers.”

“That’s like giving a person dying of pneumonia a teaspoon of cough syrup. It doesn’t address the problem and it’s not gonna work,” Everett Kelly said at a news conference Tuesday.

Hydrick Thomas, a Marine veteran and TSA employee of more than 20 years, said ICE agents may not be suited for the impromptu role.

“If you want to bring a tactical force into an environment where you’re required to have customer service and a skill set – a mindset where you know what you’re doing, how to identify something that might be suspicious – they don’t have that training,” said Thomas, the president of AFGE TSA Council 100.

Some TSA workers who are immigrants are also concerned they may be detained by ICE if they show up to work, AFGE TSA Council 100 Secretary-Treasurer Johnny Jones said.

Many TSA employees live paycheque to paycheque, making an average of US$35,000 a year, according to AFGE. A top TSA administrator has said unpaid employees are confronted with dire circumstances.

“We got folks sleeping in cars,” acting deputy administrator Adam Stahl said. “Folks having to essentially to get blood drawn to afford gas to come to work. So, the situation is dire.”

Many TSA agents feel they have no choice but to call out of work as they lack money for basic necessities, said Angela Grana, regional vice-president of Colorado AFGE TSA Local 1127. She said the fact that ICE agents are getting paid while TSA agents are not adds insult to injury.

“It feels horrible. Our mission is just as important,” Grana told CNN’s Brianna Keilar. “We should never have such a small salary to begin with for such a huge responsibility that we have. And then we’re working side by side with our counterparts that are getting paid. It’s pretty demoralizing.”

In Houston, some TSA agents no longer have the means to get to work.

“Just yesterday, I watched an officer receive a gas card from one of our partners,” Szczesniak said. “They had tears in their eyes knowing that they could fill up their tank to get home and come back to work to help keep these lines moving.”

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN