President Donald Trump has sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports across the country — but their presence appears to have done little to ease the lengthy wait times caused by the government shutdown.
Trump deployed armed ICE officers to over a dozen major transit hubs on Monday to help roughly 50,000 TSA officers who are working without pay as Congress remains at an impasse on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA and ICE.
However, sending in ICE agents has not reduced security lines, according to data from affected airports viewed by The Washington Post.
Travelers on Wednesday waited four or more hours to clear security at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Other airports, including Philadelphia’s, already had wait times under 20 minutes, even before the agents were sent there.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged that wait times hadn’t been trimmed down “as much as we’d like.” The deployment has also not broken the deadlock over DHS’s funding, which would restore TSA agents’ pay.
TSA’s acting head, Ha Nguyen McNeill, warned the agency may have to shut down operations at some airports if a deal cannot be made soon.
“This is a dire situation,” she testified at a House hearing on Wednesday. “At this point, we have to look at all options on the table. And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”
Yet Democrats and Republicans have remained at a stalemate after both parties rejected each other's proposals on Wednesday, dragging DHS’s shutdown into its 40th day.
Democrats rejected Republicans’ offer Tuesday evening, saying that the proposal did not add enough enforcement mechanisms for ICE. Their demand comes after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Republicans later turned down their counter-proposal, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune saying it was “not even close to being real.”
As negotiations remain at an impasse, lawmakers remain in the same position they were in when the shutdown began over a month ago — and travelers will continue to suffer the consequences of long TSA wait times.
Leavitt, the White House press secretary, continued to blame Senate Democrats for not cutting a deal with Republicans, saying Wednesday that they were intentionally being “cruel” to distract Americans from military wins in the Middle East.
“We have attempted in good faith numerous times… to go to the Democrats with reasonable offers,” Leavitt said. “The cruelty is the point. They want chaos.”
Trump also tried to ramp up the heat on Democrats, suggesting on Wednesday that he would put National Guard members in airports.
The president took to his Truth Social platform to blame Democrats “for the Airport’s mess” and praised ICE agents for assisting in security.
“Thank you to our great ICE Patriots for helping. It makes a big difference. I may call up the National Guard for more help,” he wrote.
Trump said earlier this week that the agents being deployed into airports would “help” TSA and “do security like no one has ever seen before.” However, since their deployment, videos shared online have shown officers standing around idly at airport doors or baggage claims.
“I see them all sitting down looking at their phones or chit-chatting,” Rep. Shri Thanedar, a Democrat from Michigan, said at the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday. “It looks like they have no role to play.”
While Trump tries to pressure Democrats into giving up their demands, some Democratic lawmakers say the president’s decision to send ICE to airports has had little impact on negotiations to end the shutdown.
Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois, called the move “just another theatrical play by the president.”
However, TSA’s McNeill said the agents had been a “helpful” presence, and were taking on less specialized tasks, including directing lines and helping passengers load bins.
“They’ve been incredibly helpful to alleviate the burden on our workforce, and we’re getting positive feedback from our passengers and field leadership alike,” McNeill said.
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