President Trump announced this morning that he is deploying ICE to airports to help ease congestion caused by the Democrats’ shutdown:
ICE officers will be deployed to airports to help clear the horrendous security lines for the TSA, which ran out of funding more than a month ago because of a Democrat shutdown, President Trump announced Sunday.
The move is meant to speed up security lines, which have stretched up to three hours at some airports as TSA agents walk off the job or call out sick because they haven’t been paid in weeks.
“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hard line criminals who have entered our Country illegally, are endangering the USA by holding back the money that was long ago agreed to with signed and sealed contracts, and all,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
I am not quite sure how this will work. Tom Homan, who will be in charge of the operation, gave a partial explanation earlier today:
Homan said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that he doesn’t envision ICE agents doing the jobs of TSA screeners, but rather handling other aspects of airport security.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an x-ray machine – because you’re not trained in that – [but] there are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs to help move those lines,” he explained.
The ICE deployment is to begin tomorrow.
I have been flying quite a bit lately and have not encountered any problems attributable to lack of TSA personnel. (Snowstorms, yes; TSA, no.) I take it that the issues are localized to certain airports, where presumably the ICE agents can be of immediate help. Elon Musk has also volunteered to pay the TSA personnel whose pay has been blocked by the Democrats; if implemented, this could help as well.
There is irony in the fact that the Democrats blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security ostensibly because of their detestation of ICE. And yet, ICE is fully funded for some time to come, and in the event, it is ICE that has plenty of money and manpower to supplement TSA.
Will that make Congressional Democrats feel silly? I don’t know. They don’t embarrass easy.
