‘No practical use': TSA experts say Trump’s ICE deployments won’t help with airport security

President Trump will beginning Monday shift Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel to airports to provide security there in a move he said will alleviate long lines created by shutdown-induced callouts but which experienced TSA officials said would have minimal impact. 

The unusual approach comes as Trump administration officials have repeatedly lamented that Transportation Security Administration employees are calling out and quitting the agency due to the shutdown’s impact on paychecks, lengthening wait times at many airports around the country. Details of the assignments were not clear as of Sunday, despite Trump declaring that the airport deployments would occur on Monday. Tom Homan, the White House’s border czar, told CNN on Sunday that he was “working on the plan” and would come up with one soon. 

Several current and former TSA officials told Government Executive that ICE personnel will be limited in what they can accomplish at airports, as they will not have the requisite training to check identification, examine luggage x-rays or provide other key security services. TSA employees go through classroom and on-the-job training before they can staff those roles, the officials said. 

“It serves no practical use,” said one former official with decades of federal experience who declined to be named out of fear of professional reprisal. “It's a political, publicity action, not a practical solution.” 

Homan suggested ICE employees could staff the areas where travelers exit their terminals, though former officials noted many airports already use non-TSA personnel for those areas. 

A second former senior TSA official added there are almost no functions ICE staff would be capable of offering. 

“They can basically provide little help,” the former senior employee said. 

In some airports, such as in Houston, call outs during the shutdown have reached 50%, forcing TSA to close lanes and leaving travelers waiting for hours to get through security. Employees have now missed at least one full paycheck after receiving a partial paycheck last month during the shutdown that began Feb. 14. Staff are guaranteed full back pay for their hours worked once the government reopens.

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 more than 400 employees leave the agency since the shutdown began, the White House said on Sunday. 

Congressional Democrats are holding out on funding the Homeland Security Department until the White House agrees to reforms for law enforcement personnel carrying out President Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown. They have repeatedly sought to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS—including on Saturday in a rare weekend session—but Republicans have blocked all of those efforts.

“If the Democrats do not allow for just and proper security at our airports, and elsewhere throughout our country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before,” Trump said on Sunday, making the announcement just one day before he said the deployments would begin. 

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA staff, said those workers spend months learning specific skills that enable them to detect explosives, weapons and individuals looking to evade security. They are recertified on an ongoing basis after receiving extensive instruction and seeking to replace them with ICE personnel would only exacerbate the problem. 

“You cannot improvise that,” Kelley said. “Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”

Lawmakers have met with Homan in recent days in hopes of reaching an agreement on reforms that Democrats would accept in exchange for funding all of DHS, but they have yet to strike such a deal. 

Kelley added that turning to ICE could prove dangerous, given that the allegations of excessive force that they have faced. 

“Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe,” Kelley said. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”