The security lines at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport stretched outside the building Monday morning. The wait times computer went down — it wasn’t designed to track queues that long. The official guidance from the airport: allow four hours or more to get through.
Inside, passengers waited. Some had been there since before dawn. And walking the terminals, wearing “ICE” and “ERO” vests, were immigration enforcement agents — people whose job, until this week, had nothing to do with airport security.
This is what the sixth week of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown looks like on the ground.
How We Got Here
DHS funding lapsed on February 14. Since then, Transportation Security Administration officers have been reporting to work without a paycheck. More than 400 have quit. Thousands more have called out — not because they don’t want to work, but because they can’t afford gas, childcare, food, or rent.
By Sunday, TSA’s call-out rate hit 11.76% — the highest single day of the shutdown — with more than 3,450 officers not showing up. At some airports, the numbers were far worse. New Orleans hit 42.3%. Atlanta reached 41.5%. Houston’s Bush Intercontinental came in at 39.1%. Nearly 40% of JFK’s workforce stayed home.
The lines that followed were not a surprise. They were a consequence.
“14 Right Now. There Will Be More.”
President Trump’s solution, announced Sunday night: deploy ICE agents to fill the gap.
By Monday morning, agents were on the ground at 14 airports — Atlanta, Houston, JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago O’Hare, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Fort Myers, San Juan, and Cleveland. Border czar Tom Homan confirmed the deployment at the White House.
“You got 14 right now, and there will be more,” Homan told reporters.
He also made clear what ICE agents can and cannot do. “I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because we’re not trained in that,” he said. Their role: crowd control, line management, and what Homan called being a “force multiplier.”
In other words, the people running your carry-on through the scanner are still the same underpaid, unpaychecked TSA officers who have been showing up anyway. ICE is there to manage the crowd around them.
“Untrained, Armed, and Instructed to Profile”
Not everyone sees the deployment as a solution.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees — which represents more than 50,000 TSA workers — was direct. “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,” he said. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson went further. “Trump’s secret police are now stationed at airport checkpoints,” he said Monday. “They are inadequately trained, armed, and instructed to profile people based on race and accent. What could possibly go wrong? We’ve seen this movie before.”
Sen. Cory Booker showed up at Newark Liberty to speak with reporters, saying travelers are scared and that airlines had told him directly they want the agents gone.
A TSA officer named Cameron Cochems put it simply. “At the end of the day, all our officers care about is getting paid. Having ICE agents at our airports — they’re going to be doing things they can’t be trained to do.”
No End in Sight
The shutdown has no resolution on the horizon. Trump rejected a potential off-ramp Sunday night that would have funded every part of DHS except ICE enforcement. His new demand: Congress must also pass the “SAVE America Act,” a federal elections overhaul bill with near-zero chance of clearing the Senate.
“I’m tying Homeland Security into voter identification,” Trump said at an event in Tennessee Monday. He told Republican senators not to worry about going home for Easter. “Make this one for Jesus,” he said.
Meanwhile, a traveler at Newark arrived three hours early for her flight and offered what may be the clearest summary of the moment.
“Just let TSA do their job. Pay them full to do their job. Don’t try to swap out people who don’t do that job. I’m a mom. I’m not going to leave my kid with the woman who watches my dog on vacation. Both caretakers. Different jobs.”