After two days of training, TSA says ICE personnel are ready to help at airports

Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel are equipped to assist airport screeners after receiving two days of training, the head of the Transportation Security Administration told lawmakers on Wednesday, who said the agents and officers are checking travelers’ identification and managing crowd control. 

Ha Nguyen McNeill, the current TSA chief, repeatedly expressed her gratitude to ICE for easing the burden on her workforce during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing. The agency is facing severe shortages as employees increasingly call out due to the ongoing Homeland Security Department shutdown, which has forced staff to work without immediate pay. ICE began deploying to airports on Monday after President Trump ordered them to do so over the weekend. 

Earlier in her testimony, McNeil lamented that TSA has lost more than 1,500 employees over the course of the two extended shutdowns this fiscal year. Replacing those workers before major events like the upcoming World Cup would prove difficult, she said, because TSA screeners require six months of training before they can conduct their jobs. 

McNeil said her agency had trained ICE employees “for several days,” before correcting herself that the training began on Monday. 

She called the manning of TSA's document reader machine and directing queueing  "non-specialized functions" that ICE staff could more easily take on. When ICE oversees those types of activities, she said, TSA staff can focus on more specialized functions. 

“It’s gone extremely well,” McNeil said of ICE’s airport deployment.

Democrats pounced on the divergence of training required for ICE staff assisting TSA and TSA employees themselves, suggesting the gap between the two demonstrated the deployments were not a serious effort to boost airport security. 

“Today is Wednesday, you said they started Monday,” said Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., “which spells out exactly our fear: it’s nothing more than window dressing and cheap theater and political performance to bring ICE agents in.” 

McNeil responded that ICE personnel are not involved in sophisticated screenings, but instead assisting with activities that require less training. 

While McNeil praised ICE staff for their efforts, she said TSA is in a “very dire situation” with the upcoming World Cup and her agency would have to closely monitor the staffing situation to determine whether to make “difficult decisions” about potentially closing airports. 

After seeing consistent staffing growth for the previous five years, TSA lost around 3,000 employees in 2025, or around 5% of its workforce, due to various firings and attrition measures. The agency has seen nearly 500 employees leave the agency since the current shutdown began in February, McNeil said. 

Around 12% of TSA screeners called out from work on Monday, the agency said. At nine airports, call out rates exceeded 20%. ICE has deployed to more than a dozen airports across the country to address long wait times, though passengers have still waited for several hours in some locations. 

TSA and more than 100,000 total Homeland Security Department employees are set to see a third at least partially missed paycheck this week. At the Coast Guard, civilian workers have missed pay but military personnel have received their normal compensation. Adm. Thomas Allan, the service’s vice commandant, told lawmakers on Wednesday the Coast Guard now faces a “grim uncertainty" of whether it can meet its next payroll for military staff.

Victoria Barton, an associate administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, warned the Disaster Relief Fund is running low and could be quickly exhausted if a major disaster strikes. Leaders throughout DHS stressed the significant toll the 40-day shutdown has taken on their workforces, with employees struggling to pay their bills and afford to get to their jobs. 

Congressional Democrats are holding out on funding DHS until the White House agrees to reforms at ICE and Customs and Border Protection. They have repeatedly sought to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS, but Republicans have blocked all of those efforts. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Senate would hold a vote Thursday on a measure to fund all of DHS except ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, though it was not immediately clear whether enough Democrats would support it to reach the 60-vote threshold for passage. Most ICE and CBP staff are currently working and getting paid with funds provided in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.