(WASHINGTON) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began fanning out at more than a dozen airports across the nation on Monday to assume some of the duties of Transportation Security Administration officers affected by a federal government funding crisis.
“What I see ICE agents doing is helping TSA plug the holes of security,” White House Border Czar Tom Homan told ABC News on Monday.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the ICE agents assigned to airports will also continue to enforce immigration laws.
“They really are a high-level group of people and they love it because they’re able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That’s very fertile territory,” Trump said during a gaggle with reporters on the tarmac in Palm Beach, Florida. “But that’s not why they’re there. They’re really there to help.”
Homan said that if ICE agents see “illegal activity,” they will take action because they are federal law enforcement officers.
Asked whether the ICE agents will be carrying out immigration enforcement at airports, Homan said, “We’re not going to ignore illegal conduct in the airport whether it’s human trafficking, whether it’s alien smuggling with somebody that’s wanted, whether it’s … someone that they believe they have reasonable suspicion to talk to because they feel there’s a criminal activity in front of them.”
“Of course, anybody would need probable cause to make any arrests, but yeah, their law enforcement officers and they’re not going to ignore the law while we’re there,” Homan said.
“I’m leaving it up to the TSA Administrator, who’s an expert airport operations,” Homan added. “Where can we plug the holes? Where can we increase security, especially in this heightened security environment, because what’s going on the world? Where can we help you to move those lines and American people quicker to inspections while the same time maintaining security at the airport?”
As ICE agents began showing up at airports on Monday, Trump earlier posted a message on social media asking them to refrain from wearing masks while helping with airport security.
“I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports,” Trump said in his post, adding that he is a “BIG proponent” of ICE agents wearing masks when they “search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals.”
Asked by reporters on Monday on Air Force One why he wants ICE agents to remove their masks at airports, Trump replied, “Because the people coming into the airport, typically speaking, aren’t murderers, killers, drug dealers, etc. There may be a few of them. But there aren’t many.”
Immigration officials wearing masks has been a key issue for critics in Trump’s nationwide mass deportation program.
Trump added that typical travelers at airports are “people that want to come into the country, and that want to leave the country, going to maybe their home countries, so I didn’t think it was an appropriate look for an airport.”
ICE agents were spotted by ABC News at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport early Monday.
The agents appeared to be helping with crowd control at the airport amid long lines of travelers trying to get through security. At one point, lines stretched outside the Atlanta airport’s terminals.
DHS funding battle continues
Democrats have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to push for policy reforms to ICE, whose aggressive tactics in enforcing immigration laws have prompted protests and lawsuits across the country.
The DHS reforms that Democratic lawmakers have proposed include requiring ICE agents not to wear face masks, be equipped with body cameras and have warrants signed by a judge before entering homes and businesses.
Republicans have, so far, rejected those proposals.
ICE and TSA are both under the umbrella of DHS. But while ICE has remained funded through appropriations from Trump’s tax and spending bill passed last summer, key DHS agencies like TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard are left unfunded.
Approximately 60,000 TSA officers have gone over a month with partial pay and last week began getting no paychecks as the stalemate over DHS funding continues.
Some TSA officers have begun calling out sick or quitting as they missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began on Feb. 14. DHS said that more than 400 TSA officers have quit so far.
Confusion over duties of ICE agents
On Sunday, Homan said the deployment of ICE would largely free up TSA agents for specialized tasks, like passenger and bag screening.
Homan, however, said ICE agents are not trained to do specialized work like screening passengers and running X-ray machines.
“But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant role, such as guarding an exit, so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Homan said that “ICE can check identification before people enter the screening area.”
But in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to contradict Homan.
Asked by Jon Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, whether the ICE agents have any practical experience in manning airport security lines, Duffy said, “They run those same type of security machines at the Southern border, right? Packages come through or people come through. They run similar assets.”
Duffy added that ICE agents could also manage the flow of travelers through airport security and help TSA with administrative tasks.
“It depends on who shows up. Every single day will dictate how long these lines are,” Duffy said. “And you don’t know as travelers are trying to figure out, do I have to come an hour-and-a-half early? Do I have to come four hours early? They don’t know until the day of or the afternoon of their flight.”
Homan attempted to clarify what duties ICE agents would have at the airports during an interview on Monday with ABC News. Homan said that Duffy might have been referring to machines used for luggage and other packages that ICE agents already run at airports.
Homan told ABC News that ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) “have a footprint of all the airports, because that’s where we open investigations on currency smuggling and human trafficking.”
“So ICE is involved with baggage investigations on that. So there is a sort of screening,” Homan said.
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