Trump’s Plan to Address Airport Mayhem
ICE, ICE baby?
NBC News reports “More than 400 TSA officers have quit since shutdown began.”
More than 400 Transportation Security Administration workers have quit since a partial government shutdown that began on Feb. 14 has left them working without pay, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Funding was shut off to DHS over demands by Democrats for reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection following alleged abuses and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.
There has also been a national callout rate of 10% at TSA on more than half the days of the last week, Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said Saturday in response to questions.
[…]
Some TSA workers have expressed fears about unpaid bills and worse because they aren’t being paid. Anthony Riley, a 58-year-old married father of three who has been working without pay for weeks, told NBC News earlier this month that he faces possible eviction and the specter of being homeless.
There have been increased wait times — and frustration — at airports due to the shutdown.
The highest nationwide callout rate during the shutdown came on Friday, at 10.22%, a DHS spokesperson said.
John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City had a callout rate of 29.5% on Friday, and Houston Intercontinental Airport had a rate of 36.6% the same day, the spokesperson said.
Houston Hobby Airport had a callout rate of 51.5% on Friday, according to DHS.
President Trump is ready with a solution.
In case the Radical Left Democrats missed it the first time, he repeated himself a little over two hours later, with feeling.
WSJ (“Trump Says He’ll Send ICE to Airports If Funding Standoff Continues“):
President Trump said he would move Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to airports starting Monday if Democrats don’t support an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
The funding impasse has resulted in hourslong security lines at some airports during the spring-break travel period as Transportation Security Administration officers have quit or called off from work. If Congress doesn’t agree on DHS funding by March 27 and leaves for a scheduled two-week recess, TSA officers are set to miss more than a month of paychecks.
If a deal isn’t reached, Trump wrote Saturday in a social-media post, “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday.” ICE agents at airports would do “Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” he wrote in another post.
I’m no expert on border security, but to the best of my knowledge, our problem with illegal immigration does not involve people flying in on commercial airlines. Unless things have changed since my last international flight, those people have to clear customs. And be able to afford a plane ticket.
Additionally, to the best of my knowledge, ICE does not train its officers to scan luggage.
Regardless,
Funding for DHS, of which the TSA is a part, has been held up by a fight between Republicans and Democrats over immigration enforcement. Congress has held several votes on restoring funding and plans more, but the prospects for a deal look dim. While ICE is also part of the department, the agency has access to funds from a separate law passed last year.
There is no small irony that Congressional Democrats are using what little leverage they have to force a change in the way ICE is being used in such a way that makes all DHS employees except ICE agents suffer.
Republicans could end the standoff and support TSA workers by voting for Democrats’ proposal to restore funding to TSA specifically, Democratic senators including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) have said.
On Saturday, Schumer used a procedural maneuver to try to force a vote on funding the TSA, but Republicans blocked the move.
GOP senators, meanwhile, have led efforts to fund all of DHS, which Democrats have stopped.
“The rank and file who work for TSA have nothing to do with the process, and yet they’re the ones without a paycheck,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) said recently.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said he would cancel the coming Senate recess if the two sides can’t reach a deal.
TSA workers are a linchpin of U.S. airport security, scanning travelers and their bags before they can head to their gates. Pay varies by location, though the mean annual wage was $61,800 in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As the weeks pass without paychecks, officer absences have slowed security checks at airports across the U.S. Some lines have taken travelers hours to pass.
Underscoring the concerns about the backups at airports, billionaire Elon Musk posted on X on Saturday offering to pay TSA workers during the funding impasse. It wasn’t immediately clear how Musk planned to do that.
Many officers have been struggling to afford rent, utilities and other expenses, said several officers and their union.
If TSA workers go without another paycheck, “I don’t know how many people are actually going to be able to make it into work,” said Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer for the American Federation of Government Employees TSA Council 100, which represents the officers.
Some officers have sold plasma, delivered groceries and driven for ride-hailing services to get money to pay bills, according to the union.
An officer in Florida said he is planning to quit and take another security job if March 27 comes and goes without a funding deal, because he can’t afford to go longer without pay. His bank account is already $500 short, the officer said, and his utility company has threatened to shut off his power next month if he doesn’t pay his overdue bills before then.
Federal law prohibits TSA workers from striking. In addition, the agency has made it harder for officers to call in sick, said workers and union officials. In the past, officers didn’t need a doctor’s note until they had been sick for three days. Now, a note is required on day one, said the workers and union officials. Otherwise, they may not be able to get back pay for those days.
Officers at two airports said that their managers encouraged them to take out a loan from their federal-worker retirement plan, but that they are reluctant to do so because they would lose out on any earnings and would need to repay the loans with interest.
That TSA workers, who are poorly paid to begin with, are having to work a demanding job without pay is just outrageous. That some are having to take on second jobs, rely on food banks to feed their families, and risk having their homes and cars repossessed is simply shameful.
The ICE agents must be thrilled at the prospect of having all those passengers lined up waiting haplessly to be beaten up or fatally shot.
In terms of a pure political calculation, deploying ICE to airports where they will encounter and interact with a bunch of middle-class and upper-class citizens sounds like it could backfire pretty substantially.
Airline passengers are America’s greatest enemy!
@CSK:
Wait until they claim passengers weaponized water bottles.
@CSK:
On this possibility I heard a comedian say something like:
‘remember people, be sure to pull your laptops or iPads out of your pack as quested, or risk being shot by a masked man who had a D-grades in high school.’
Apologies … deleted a 2x post.
Because Trump is a blithering idiot who has never had to think about the details, he has no concept of a job that requires skill and experience. Not just the people who scan luggage, but also the people who handle critical diplomacy. Why not put hired goons in charge of airport lines? Or his son-in-law and golfing buddy in charge of negotiations with Russia, Israel, and anywhere else?
When Needy Amin first proposed the wall there were jokes about, “50,000 ft tall?” I don’t recall numbers, but the claim was a high proportion of “illegals” entered legally and overstayed visas. However they did enter on valid visas, so short of racial profiling, it’s hard to see what ICE might do about it at airports.
I’ve seen nothing on whether or how ICE is getting paid on a frozen DHS budget. For an ICE recruit x-raying bags all day would be way less fun than hoping to beat somebody up. would ICE develop the same sick out and quit rate as TSA?
I did see a headline, I think NYT, to the effect GOPs blocked Dem effort to fund TSA. Baby steps.
@Kathy:
That will no doubt happen.
@al Ameda:
I wonder: Will the ICE agents be masked in the airports?
@gVOR10:
“Needy Amin”,,,I love it.
@CSK:
Actually, that’s a good question.
Or will they be outfitted in new MMA uniforms?
@CSK:
Stolen. I’d credit the source if I remembered.
Pulling some ICE agents off the streets sounds like an excellent idea, and I can see absolutely no potential problems with putting them in roles that are 50% customer service, and where they are always being filmed, and where they don’t get to just be violent thugs anytime they want, or fire tear gas and less lethal rounds at any crowd within 500 feet.
I strongly approve of this.
@Steven L. Taylor:
We’re all familiar with the TSA agents who interact directly with us as we pass through the inspection stations before we can get to the gates. Are there a bunch of other positions that don’t involve direct contact with the public? Guarding doors, checking employee badges in the back corridors, etc? Would putting ICE personnel in those positions free up TSA agents who have been trained for the inspection stuff?
I know, I’m probably naive to think that there are still some competent managers in the administration who actually think about how to implement some of the decisions.
Anyone accepting a government job in this day and age has to understand that shutdowns are a regular occurrence.
I’m sure the many folks illegally fired by DOGE also had financial difficulties.
Anyway, anyone working for this administration has the faint odor of collaborator. Often only a faint odor, because — as the saying goes — “ya gotta do whatcha gotta do” — but a bit of an odor. Some of them doubtless think that they are uninvolved in supporting a fascist regime, since they are just examining luggage or making sure the trains run on time, and others think they are doing more good than bad* or “that this too shall pass”, and others wholeheartedly embrace fascism.
But, on whole, the plight of the government employees having their paychecks delayed is a lesser plight than minority groups being attacked by ICE based on the color of their skin, or the troops being sent into an illegal war, or the victims of this illegal war, or… there’s a long hierarchy of victimhood, and I’d put these folks near the bottom.
*: what was the line from Richard III — “but what if the devil tempts the to good?” There’s no easy answer and I’m not pretending there is.
@Gustopher:
“I can see absolutely no potential problems with putting them [ICE agents] in roles that are 50% customer service, and where they are always being filmed, and where they don’t get to just be violent thugs anytime they want, or fire tear gas and less lethal rounds at any crowd within 500 feet.”
And are not masked while they do it.
TSA employees are disproportionaty black and brown, 55%+ are PoC. Like flight crew, they deserve kudos for the professional job they do, dealing with stupid/clueless people constantly to increase travel safety. The way I see folks misbehave while traveling, I would not last long in these jobs.
The carelessness and hostility towards them, which predates this partial shutdown, is just part and parcel America’s raciized microagressions — from both sides.
Were TSA’s workforce 55% white, the right would not long tolerate them missing paychecks, and the rest would hesitate shrugging it off as so much disposable noise. (Here I will posit again that if Trump’s Jan 6 terrorists had been mostly PoC instead of mostly white, they would’ve been a) accurately described as “terrorists,” b) mowed down on the Capitol Steps in a hail of gunfire, deservedly so, and c) ineligible for pardons.)
Throwing ICE at the problem is standard Trump incompetence. Sound and fury, solving nothing.