US president Donald Trump has begun deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to US airports to assist with security checks.
The news comes after a partial government shutdown caused major funding issues for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In turn, this has led to increasing waiting times at airport security checkpoints.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border tsar, told CNN that ICE is “helping TSA [Transportation Security Administration] 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 claimed ICE agents won’t be directly involved in passenger screenings.
Meanwhile, the TSA agent’s union hit back with a statement that staff:
deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents.
ICE: untrained, armed and dangerous
Showing his characteristic degree of professionalism, Trump first threatened to deploy ICE on Truth Social. On 21 March, he posted:
I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.
The partial shutdown has dragged on because Trump has tied re-opening the DHS to the condition that Democrats sign off on his ludicrously-named ‘SAVE America Act’. Again on Truth Social, he wrote:
I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.
It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people – UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION [sic] of our precious children … In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!
Because shutting down government departments to force the opposition party to pass a bill removing voting rights and trans rights definitely isn’t a clear sign of fascism.
Vote rigging
This move is a transparent attempt at vote rigging, as Trump himself has admitted. At a press conference on 9 March, he boasted:
They know if we get this, they probably won’t win an election for 50 years, maybe longer.
As such, it’s unsurprising that CNN has called the chance of the act passing “near-impossible”. Meanwhile, the DHS has received no funding since mid-February, resulting in the current TSA shortage.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents TSA workers, said:
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.
They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.
Here, Everett was presumably referring to the multiple high-profile murders carried out by ICE thugs. Likewise, whilst some TSA members are currently working for free, more than 400 have quit their jobs since the shutdown began.
‘The last thing that the American people need’
Homan is in talks with the DHS to determine ICE agents’ role in airport security. Reportedly, the current plan revolves around having ICE cover entry and exit points, freeing up TSA officers to conduct screenings.
Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the US House of representatives, also criticised the use of Trump’s armed militiamen as airport bouncers. He toldCNN:
The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalise or in some instances, kill them. We’ve already seen how ICE conducts itself.
These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have, for the most part, let alone deploying them in close exposure in highly sensitive situations at airports across the country.
The US House of Representatives will break for Easter on 30 March, if all goes according to schedule. With no resolution in sight for Trump’s SAVE America Act, and ICE agents already deployed in US airports, the stalemate is set to get worse before it is brought to a close.
Featured image via The Guardian/ David Grunfeld/ AP
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