Airport wait times in the U.S. have reached all-time highs, despite President Trump sending hordes of ICE goons to save the day.
Trump’s administration has now overseen the longest average wait in the Transportation Security Administration’s 24-year history, with some airports experiencing waits of more than four hours.
The agency’s deputy administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that it is due to the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February.
She told committee members that at some badly affected hubs, the number of staff not presenting for work was reaching highs of 40 to 50 percent.
The committee heard that if the status quo continues until Friday, $1 billion in missed paychecks will have accumulated. She claimed that the consequences of this for those employees had been catastrophic, with some missing bills, facing eviction notices, taking other jobs, and even selling blood and plasma.
“This level of disruption is unprecedented, and unacceptable, and significantly undermines the security of U.S. transportation systems,” she said, according to NPR.
“Paying these dedicated employees for the work they are performing should never be a point of debate,” she added.
The shortage led Trump to send ICE agents to airports around the country on Monday, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
According to DHS numbers provided to the Daily Beast, on March 25, the call-out rate among agents was 11.14 percent—or roughly 3,120 TSA agents—slightly lower than the shutdown’s highest, 11.76 percent on March 22.
“This reckless shutdown has driven nearly 500 TSA officers to quit, while thousands more are forced to call out because they can’t afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis told the Daily Beast in a comment. Bis blamed the “Democrats,” and said that Trump “is taking decisive action-deploying hundreds of ICE officers, already funded by Congress, to the airports under the greatest strain.”
Both Republicans and Democrats have blamed the other side for the shutdown, with the latter claiming that ICE, which like TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is overfunded.
Ostensibly, the mission of the agents is to help lighten the load for their embattled TSA colleagues. But because many have not been trained to work at security checkpoints—McNeill said this can take four to six months—many have been snapped wandering aimlessly and hanging around the airport with seemingly little to do.
Multiple news outlets, including MS Now and CNN, have reported not getting clear answers from agents about their mission there or having witnessed them doing little. One DHS source told CBS News over the weekend: “I have no idea what we’re doing.”
In an acknowledgement of how well ICE’s foray into the commercial air travel business is going, Trump said he was now considering sending in the military instead.
“And if we have to, we’re going to send in the National Guard, if we need to,” Trump said during his speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual fundraising dinner on Wednesday.
“Because we have 6,000 ICE agents and we have 40,000 of the other people that they’re helping out, who really were forced because the Democrats don’t want to pay them.”
It comes in the wake of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem being replaced by former MAGA senator Markwayne Mullin.
Prior to her departure, Noem—nicknamed ICE Barbie for her love of cosplaying like her agents—spent $220 million on an ad campaign that featured her own face heavily, as well as $200 million on a pair of Gulfstream G700 Private Jets during the last government shutdown.
