Federal immigration officers were seen at several US airports on Monday after the Trump administration said it would deploy ICE agents to ease security lines amid an ongoing partial government shutdown.
The shutdown, which began on February 14, has resulted in long lines at the airport’s pre-gate security checkpoints, which are normally manned by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents. Since the shutdown, hundreds of thousands of agents under the Department of Homeland Security, including the TSA, have worked without pay because Congress has failed to approve new funding.
They are democrats requesting changes in federal immigration operations after reports of abuse by agents, including the killing of two US citizens earlier this year.
In recent days, travelers have filmed sequences with waiting times estimated at several hours. Trump border czar Tom Homan he told CNN that ICE agents will be deployed starting Monday to airports with the longest wait times. Homan said the details of the plan were still under discussion.
Critics say having ICE agents at airports would increase tensions with travelers.
Federal agents were seen making at least one arrest at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday night, according to eyewitness accounts. A video posted on TikTok shows unidentified, plainclothes agents who refuse to be identified as they detain a person, including a child, through the security line at a terminal gate. A video posted on Reddit shows the agents detaining a person from another angle. TechCrunch contacted the poster.
Jason Sweeney, an ICE spokesman, confirmed the arrest, saying ICE agents made the arrest “before ICE officers were even deployed to augment TSA’s efforts to assist American travelers facing long lines across the country.”
According to Associated Press reporters, ICE agents have also shown up at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The Guardian reports ICE showed up at Newark, New Orleans and John F. Kennedy airports in New York. CNN exhibitions that Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Phoenix and San Juan are among the airports where ICE has been deployed.
ICE is known to use a wide variety of tools to track and target people, including facial recognition apps and phone unlocking tools to get into people’s devices. ICE agents also use location data, obtained from users’ phone apps and games, to track people’s whereabouts.
Have you traveled through a US airport and interacted with ICE instead of (or including) TSA? Contact zackwhittaker.1337 at Signal. He can also be reached by email at zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com.
Updated with comment from ICE.
