Trump threatens to deploy ICE agents to airports Monday if funding deal isn’t reached

By Alejandra Jaramillo, Riane Lumer, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he will deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to US airports on Monday if an agreement isn’t reached to fund the Department of Homeland Security amid a partial government shutdown.

“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!” the president wrote on Truth Social Saturday afternoon. “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!”

It is unclear what function the ICE agents would perform since they’re not trained in airport security screening. Transportation Security Administration screeners have a monthslong training period before they’re on the job, though airline employees and private security companies have partnered on line controlling and guarding exit doors.

The agents could potentially help in more limited roles — like managing lines, directing passengers or helping move people through the checkpoint process — to free up trained TSA officers for critical security functions.

CNN has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA, and the White House for more information.

Trump suggested in an earlier Truth Social post on Saturday that the ICE agents would “do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”

The threat comes as a weekslong stalemate over DHS funding has led to disruptions at airports across the country, with Transportation Security Administration workers going without pay and staffing shortages contributing to delays. Lawmakers from both parties have been working to reach an agreement to reopen the department, but a resolution remains uncertain. Democrats are demanding reforms that would curb Trump’s immigration policies after two people were killed during an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Democrats have been pushing for stand-alone funding for TSA, while Republicans have rejected a piecemeal approach to funding DHS. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said a group of bipartisan senators, along with White House border czar Tom Homan, would meet again Saturday, after a meeting a day earlier was “productive” and the White House made a new proposal offer to Democrats.

Democratic senators on Saturday condemned Trump’s threat, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut telling reporters the threat “to use ICE agents as a general kind of militia or state police is contrary to the Constitution, the law of the United States, and common sense.”

“If the president is serious about providing TSA salaries, he ought to agree with us that ICE should be forced to obey the law, not deployed helter-skelter around the United States as an all-purpose police force,” Blumenthal added.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia argued that Trump’s word is “worthless,” and that the threat is “one more reason why we’ve got to get TSA funded.”

Republican Sen. John Kennedy, meanwhile, said “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,” the Louisiana lawmaker told CNN, adding, “Unless those ICE folks can be trained really quickly to become TSA agents … it will be supportive but not dispositive.”

Thune said he hopes a deal can be reached on DHS funding so that “ideally” it “wouldn’t be necessary” to have ICE agents at airports.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Aaron Cooper, Richa Sharma, Dalia Abdelwahab, Veronica Stracqualursi and Camila DeChalus contributed to this report.

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