ICE Agents Frustrate Airport Workers as Shutdown Drags On

On Thursday, hours-long security lines snaked through New York City’s LaGuardia Airport. The wait was far from the longest in the country—George Bush International Airport in Houston reported three and a half hour lines. Over a month into a partial government shutdown that has left some Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees working without pay, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents are calling in sick or leaving work en masse, leading to travel chaos around the US. The Trump administration’s solution? Send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in.

ICE agents were deployed to at least 14 airports on Monday, ostensibly in an effort to speed up security lines—and five days into ICE’s incursion, airport employees are infuriated. The ICE agents, Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) who work for the TSA tell WIRED, don’t have the proper certification and training to perform many of tasks that might truly speed up security lines. The TSA employees say they’re frustrated by the situation—and worried about what it might mean for their future.

ICE agents have been spotted walking in packs, patrolling security lines and baggage areas. They have been seen giving directions to lost passengers, photographed distributing mini water bottles to those waiting in line, and, more often than not, standing around and appearing to do very little. “ICE are here and they’re doing literally nothing to help,” passengers in a security line overheard one airline worker complain on Wednesday at John F. Kennedy airport in New York.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some passengers stuck in line spotted ICE agents being trained to check passenger IDs and boarding passes. In a hearing in front of the US House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday, TSA acting head Ha Nguyen McNeill said that “the travel document checker function is one of the nonspecialized screen functions of the TSA,” and said ICE agents are being trained to conduct checks.

TSOs say ICE’s presence is frustrating to those working without pay—especially because ICE agents are being paid. “If you want to bring a tactical force into an environment where it's required to have customer service and a mindset where you know what you're doing, how to identify something that might be suspicious—they don't have that training,” says Hydrick Thomas, a security officer and the president of AFGE Local 2222, which covers New York and New Jersey airports.

Security officers say they’re concerned for their coworkers, who, thanks to last fall’s government shutdown, haven’t received a steady paycheck for half of the fiscal year. Agents are worried about paying for rent, mortgages, gas, and childcare. Food banks have stood up drives in several airports, including those in Houston, North Carolina, and San Diego. In Knoxville, Tennessee, airport authorities are accepting donations for employees at a Delta Airlines counter. Eleven percent of airport checkpoint employees called out on Tuesday, compared to four percent pre-shutdown, a federal official testified to Congress on Wednesday morning. Some airports, including those in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, and New York’s John F. Kennedy, have seen daily callout rates higher than 35 percent. More than 480 TSA screeners have quit since the shutdown began in February, the agency says.

Long term, security officers say they’re concerned that the federal government plans to replace them with other federal agents, including ICE agents, or private sector employees. One mentioned Project 2025, a blueprint for the second Trump administration published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which advocates for privatizing TSA altogether.

“A part of the American dream that I was sold was that working for the government was honorable and stable,” Carlos Rodriguez, a security officer and a AFGE TSA Council 100 vice president representing airports Northeastern airports from New Jersey to Vermont. “But this is not honorable or stable at this moment.”

On Thursday, President Donald Trump said in Truth Social post that he would sign an executive order to pay TSA workers, but didn’t say how and when the paychecks might hit federal employees’ bank accounts.

“To have them come in …while officers are not receiving a paycheck, I feel like it’s a waste,” says Aaron Barker, an officer speaking in his capacity as the president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 554, which represents airports in Georgia. “It’s a waste of money that could have been coming into officers’ bank accounts.” Barker says members have mostly seen ICE agents monitoring lines and directing traffic, functions the Atlanta airport usually has non-TSA employees perform.

Tim Roberts, a spokesperson for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, said in a written statement that “ICE agents are onsite to provide crowd management and support for our TSA partners.”

TSA and DHS did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Flight attendants can feel the tension, says Paul Hartshorn, Jr., a spokesperson for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents 28,000 American Airlines employees. “There are elevated stress levels right now,” Hartshorn says. “By the time passengers get to the aircraft door—they’re getting onto an aircraft that’s already tight to begin with. It’s an already confrontational situation made worse.” On Tuesday, the union put out guidance for members interacting with ICE agents, and said the organization “has repeatedly raised concerns and sought clear, consistent guidance from [American Airlines] regarding these new situations.”

The White House has touted shorter lines as a result of ICE’s intervention. But security agents say that shorter lines have more to do with the usual daily and weekly fluctuations of air traffic, and the particularities of different airports’ workforces, than the agents themselves. “We’re coming to the end of spring break, so lines are not going to be as long coming out of Atlanta,” says Barker. Security officers say higher callout rates in specific regions probably have to do with challenges associated with a higher cost of living. In larger and more expensive cities like Houston, for example, officers who live far from the airport might be having an especially hard time affording gas to get to work. Officers also said that some TSA units are adhering to stricter absence policies than others.