(CNN) — President Donald Trump said Sunday border czar Tom Homan will be in charge of deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports on Monday, with Homan telling CNN the agents will help with security at entrances and exits to ease the Transportation Security Administration’s workload.
“This is about going to helping TSA do their mission and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union with Dana Bash.”
Long security lines have been seen at airports around the country, as TSA officers have quit their jobs or called out sick as they continue to work without pay amid a partial government shutdown. Homan said his “opinion is that we concentrate on the airports where the longest waits are, we prioritize those large airports with those long waits like three hours.”
“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise, such as screening through the X-ray machine — Not training that, we won’t do that,” Homan said. “But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant roles, such as guarding an exit so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker, and we’re just simply helping our fellow officers at TSA.”
The border czar said ICE will continue conducting immigration enforcement operations while aiding TSA. He added that planning discussions are taking place Sunday in coordination with the heads of ICE and the TSA, and that the public can expect more details of “a well thought out plan to execute” later Sunday.
Trump first announced the move to deploy ICE agents on social media Saturday, as lawmakers worked toward reaching an agreement to fund DHS amid mounting travel disruptions. Democrats have refused to fund the department as they demand changes that would rein in Trump’s immigration policies after two people were killed during an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Bipartisan appropriators held a brief meeting with Homan on Friday evening that sources from both parties called “productive.” Another meeting with Homan that Senate Majority Leader John Thune had previewed for Saturday was cancelled, a GOP leadership source said, but it was unclear why.
Talks are expected to continue Sunday as Republicans await a counteroffer from Democrats after receiving a proposal to break the impasse from the White House on Friday. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing to reach a deal by the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the talks.
Two of the big sticking points remain whether to require judicial warrants on an immigration enforcement action and require ICE agents to remove their masks — both key Democratic demands that the White House has resisted.
Senators are eager to wrap up talks and pass a bill before Easter recess begins at week’s end, meaning a deal needs to be reached within the next couple of days to begin the legislative process in order to meet that timeframe.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told “State of the Union” on Sunday the plan to send ICE agents to airports was an effort to “squeeze lawmakers to try to finally come up with a plan to fund DHS.”
“It’s unfortunate that Republicans have decided that they would rather force TSA agents to work without pay, inconvenience millions of Americans all across the country and now potentially expose them to untrained ICE agents and create chaos at airports throughout the land, rather than get ICE agents under control,” Jeffries told CNN’s Dana Bash.
On Saturday, Republican Sen. John Kennedy told CNN “it could help” to send ICE agents to airports, but suggested that it’s not a definitive solution to the long security lines.
“If they’re planning on using some of the ICE folks to help with crowd control to free up TSA people to do the screening, I could see a scenario where that might help.”
CNN’s Manu Raju and Camila DeChalus contributed to this report.
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