Of all the things to say about ICE agents, President Donald Trump can’t help but focus on one: their muscles.
Trump, 79, posted on Truth Social on Wednesday about how proud he was of “our ICE Patriots,” whom he stationed at major airports nationwide starting on Monday.
“The fact is, they shouldn’t have to do this, but they are rehabbing a fake image given to them by Radical Left Democrat politicians. The Public is loving ICE, so the Democrats, unwittingly, did us a favor,” he said. “They are Great American Patriots, they just happen to have much larger, and harder, muscles than most — which is what they’re supposed to have.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House and DHS to ask what ICE agents would be using their “larger and harder” muscles for at airports.
One reason ICE agents’ alleged big muscles may come in handy is for overweight baggage, as Trump said they are helping travellers with luggage “in addition to what they are supposed to be doing.”
Trump decreed on Truth Social earlier this week that ICE agents would be deployed to fill in staffing shortages resulting from the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has left TSA employees working without pay for over a month.
The idea may have originated from a caller on right-wing radio host Clay Travis’s show on Friday, where “Linda from Arizona” suggested a “solution to the TSA problem.”
Several sources told CBS News on Sunday that Trump’s decision had caught the department off guard, with one unnamed DHS source saying, “I have no idea what we’re doing.”
A former senior ICE official told the outlet that federal immigration agents were not trained to handle the technical tasks involved in airport security, including operating screening machines.
Since Monday, ICE agents have been spotted loitering across the 14 airports they were assigned to.
A TSA officer in Arizona, Pascual Contreras, told the BBC that the move didn’t make much sense.
“I don’t think we need them here. We need to be paid, why would you bring another agency to be TSA when you already have TSA?” he said.
An unnamed ICE agent at Phoenix Sky Harbor International told the Tucson Sentinel on Tuesday: “If anything, we feel sorry for the TSA agents, they’re the ones not getting paid.”
TSA employees have already worked 87 days without pay throughout the 2026 fiscal year, which will total nearly $1 billion in unpaid payroll by March 27, according to the agency’s top official, Ha Nguyen McNeill.
When Trump deployed the National Guard to left-leaning cities last year in what he said was an effort to reduce crime, federal troops took on the responsibility of glorified Park Service employees, as they were seen picking up trash and spreading mulch.
