Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has revealed that ICE agents won’t just be helping travelers forced to wait in line at airports, but arresting people too.
The president announced on Sunday that he would send ICE agents into airports to help ease the chaos as travelers face crippling delays due to a partial government shutdown that has left TSA staff unpaid.
There have been suggestions, however, that Trump may have an ulterior motive, with MAGA architect Steve Bannon saying it could be a “test run” ahead of “ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”
Homan, speaking on Fox News, did not address this specifically, but did open up on what the goon squad’s role in U.S. travel hubs entails. Beginning with a customary tongue on Trump’s proverbial boot, the experienced border point man told Sean Hannity on Monday: “Trump made a brilliant move this week, and he called me, he says, ‘Let’s send ICE to the airport.’ I thought it was a smart move.”
Earlier on Monday, Homan said hundreds of ICE agents had been deployed to 14 airports in cities including New York, Atlanta, and Houston to deal with the shutdown-induced chaos.
“And we’re filling the holes,” he told Hannity. “The wait lines already dropped. Plus, we’re doing a security, uh, function at the airports,” he revealed.
Elaborating, he added, “We’re going to arrest criminals going through this airport. We’re going to look for human trafficking, sex trafficking, money, you know, um, money smuggling.”
He reiterated the “smart move” from Trump. “We’re going to be at the airports working with our brothers and sisters of TSA. They’re our brothers and sisters within DHS,” he said.
“President Trump made a smart move. We’re going to keep the airplanes flying. We’re going to get the American people to those lines quicker, and we’re not going to give up President Trump’s promise to American people to make this country safer every day, and that’s what we’re going to keep going.”
TSA agents have been working without pay for over a month and are calling out at a record pace, causing security lines to stretch as long as six hours at some airports, according to social media reports. How ICE agents—who have no training in airport screening—are supposed to help remains anyone’s guess.
Several DHS sources told CBS News over the weekend that the department, which oversees ICE, was blindsided by Trump’s order. One official put it plainly: “I have no idea what we’re doing.”
Images emerging Monday did little to contradict that assessment. A viral photo on X shows an ICE officer standing behind a TSA agent, peering at her screen as she checks a passenger’s ID. The traveler who posted it, flying through Atlanta, clarified in follow-up posts that the ICE agent was “not scanning anything, they are looking at the screen after the person scans your ID.”
Elsewhere, Reuters photographers captured ICE agents standing together in a group, not assisting with screening at all.
There has been no sign of relief at the airports where ICE has been deployed. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Newark Liberty International Airport have all disabled their security wait-time trackers because lines have grown too long to quantify.
Officials in Atlanta are pleading with passengers to arrive at least four hours early—and even that is proving insufficient, with travelers still reporting they are missing their flights.
