MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert has been caught out in an embarrassing attempt to praise President Trump’s demand to install ICE officers in airports.
ICE officers began being deployed in airports across the U.S. on Monday, in an effort to assist understaffed TSA workers who have not been paid since the partial government shutdown last month.
The ICE agents were sent to 14 airports, including New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Pittsburgh International Airport and the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Gushing over Trump’s installation of ICE officers, Boebert posted a gleeful video on her social media on Monday afternoon claiming there’d been an immediate impact in Minneapolis thanks to the new security.
“ICE agents show up at airports,” her video was captioned. She stated, “While the rest of our country has three-plus-hour waits–thanks Democrats–in Minneapolis Airport’s TSA, wait time right now is less than five minutes,” Boebert said.
She laughed, adding that she “called it” and “you can’t make this stuff up!!”
However, it appeared Boebert may have been woefully misinformed. No ICE agents had been deployed to the city’s biggest airport, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, or any other airports in Minnesota.
Fox9 Minneapolis said on Monday that the MSP airport had not seen major security delays and is not on the list for ICE agent deployment.
Wait times had been reported as short as five minutes, without any need for ICE intervention.
A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission told the Daily Beast they were “not aware of any planned changes for security checkpoint staffing at MSP at this time.”
They said the airport has managed to avoid long wait times, despite the partial government shutdown and chaos at other airports.
“TSA checkpoint wait times have consistently remained under 30 minutes at MSP Airport, despite heavy spring break travel. The relatively low wait times are a testament to the commitment of the local TSA team.”
The Daily Beast has contacted reps for Boebert and DHS for comment.
Boebert proudly pinned the 18-second video to the top of her X page on Monday.
Despite Trump saying the “brilliant and patriotic” ICE agents would “do Security like no one has ever seen before,” photos from Monday show the federal officers being paid to hang around.
ICE officers were photographed wandering around Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s baggage claim with coffee cups and orange juice in their hands. At Newark Airport, agents were captured standing in a circle, with one wearing earphones, while another chugged from a can.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said on Sunday that they would provide extra security to lessen TSA queues, noting, “I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that.”
Boebert appeared on The Matt Gaetz Show on Monday, where she did not discuss the ICE agents, but stood up for Trump’s discussion of a five-day pause on attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure after soaring global oil prices.
“President Trump is once again showing that he rides shotgun to no one,” Boebert said. “And world leaders would be wise to listen carefully to what he says, their life just may depend on it.”
However, Boebert questioned the need for a $200 billion supplemental spending bill, given the plans to put the conflict on hold. The extra funding would need to be approved by Congress, including Boebert.
“I’m not going to blindly support a bill without knowing what’s even in it,” she said. “And I’m not going to fund regime change wars in the Middle East without an actual answer as to what’s going on.”
She added, “President Trump certainly has destroyed Iran’s leadership and I’m for it, and now let’s get the heck out of Dodge and start focusing on getting prices down and returning back to America-first policies.”
