Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were deployed at airports across the nation on Monday, but their exact purpose was unclear, and their presence did not ease the pain of many travelers.
Between 100 and 150 ICE officers were sent to the airports to assist Transportation Security Administration agents, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because that person was not authorized to discuss the matter.
ICE agents were seen at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, O’Hare International Airport in Chicago and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Some strode through terminal halls on regular patrols, while others were stationed at security checkpoints. Many stood and observed, chatted with colleagues or looked at their phones, instead of taking on tasks that would alleviate the burden on understaffed T.S.A. agents, some of whom said they believed ICE was there mostly for crowd control.
The U.S. official who estimated the number of ICE agents deployed said they were not expected to make immigration arrests, though that appeared to conflict with President Trump’s statement about the agents on Sunday.
Despite the deployment of the agents and a deadly collision and closure at LaGuardia Airport in New York overnight, flight delays and cancellations were minimal at major U.S. airports Monday, according to FlightAware, which tracks aviation data.
Still, hours of waiting at T.S.A. checkpoints caused many travelers to miss their flights. Things were moving smoothly at some airports, including the ones in Minneapolis and Chicago. But major hubs in Atlanta and the New York City area gave up on updating their live wait-time trackers Monday morning, leaving passengers to wait and worry in lines that sometimes stretched into the airports’ remotest reaches.
At George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the lines wound all the way into the stuffy underground walkways connecting the terminals. At one point, the estimated wait time was four hours.
“I’ve never seen a line like this,” Laila Josephine, a CLEAR employee at the airport, said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 400 T.S.A. agents have quit during the partial government shutdown, and on Sunday, more than 3,450 of them called out from work, or about 12 percent of those scheduled. Thousands have gone without pay.
ICE agents, some of whom were armed with handguns, wore vests inscribed with their agency letters. Many were not wearing masks, though at LaGuardia Airport and Chicago O’Hare, some agents were wearing hygiene masks. In a Monday morning post on Truth Social, President Trump said that he preferred that the agents did not wear masks.
He said he would deploy the National Guard, too, if the ICE agents could not alleviate delays.
Some travelers expressed unease over the presence of the ICE agents, following widespread public anger over the agency’s enforcement operations over the past year, particularly early this year in Minneapolis. Agents have used aggressive tactics in their pursuit of immigrants they wanted to deport, and they killed two American citizens, prompting protests across the United States.
Tom Charging Hawk, 38, a web developer from Boston, flew into O’Hare on Monday on his way to a conference. On his way to the baggage claim, he said, he walked past a few ICE agents standing near an exit. He did not see them interacting with travelers, but their presence unnerved him.
“I’m rattled by the whole thing,” Mr. Charging Hawk said, adding that he knew of people who had opted out of the conference “because of ICE and security weirdness.”
Other airports where ICE personnel, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations, were expected to work as of Sunday night included Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers and Philadelphia International Airport, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.
Aaron Barker, the president of the T.S.A. employees’ union in Georgia, said ICE agents did not have the training to screen passengers and called their presence at the Atlanta airport “a slap in the face” to the T.S.A. workers who were there.
“A lot of officers are feeling like it’s an embarrassment,” he said. “They’re not getting paid, and then you bring people in to basically just stand over them.”
Trump administration officials have cast the ICE operation largely as one to help airports manage their labyrinthine security lines. But the Trump administration has not given details about what the agents were tasked with doing.
Mr. Trump has described the deployment as a response to the impasse between congressional Democrats and the White House over immigration enforcement, a stalemate that caused the partial shutdown last month. But Mr. Trump said on Monday that there should not be a deal until Democrats agreed to vote with Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which would impose strict voter ID requirements.
Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, said at a news conference at the Newark airport on Monday that President Trump had “refused to let dollars flow to the T.S.A.” He continued, “The reason why he’s not doing it is because he wants to continue the reckless, chaotic actions of ICE.”
Airlines have been lobbying Congress and the Trump administration to resolve the funding impasse. In a letter to members of Congress last week, the chief executives of the country’s largest airlines bemoaned that “once again air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown.”
But airlines cannot do much to resolve the crisis beyond making public statements and holding some flights for passengers delayed by the long lines.
Tonya Johnson, 46, has worked in the Newark airport for eight years, serving bagels, coffee and pizza in Terminal C. As she watched an ICE patrol pass by her workplace Monday morning, she was not impressed.
“I don’t know what their purpose is,” she said, adding, “They’re just standing there, and they’re in the way.”
At the airport in Atlanta, Marlia Marston, 25, said she had spent three hours inching toward security Monday morning before deciding to give up and make the trip to Toronto another day.
Ms. Marston, a construction project manager from Decatur, Ga., said that the ICE officers there were so outnumbered by the droves of travelers that they faded into the background. “I don’t think their presence is helping regulate anything,” she said.
But others supported their presence. Mark Frysak, 68, a cotton farmer, spent hours waiting to get through security at George Bush airport in Houston on Monday before giving up hope that he could make his flight home to Midland, Texas. But he attributed the delays to Democrats.
“I feel fantastic about the ICE agents coming in and trying to protect us,” he said. Democrats, he said, “won’t pass a bill, and now T.S.A. agents aren’t getting paid and aren’t able to feed their families.”
Airports were under extra strain on Monday because of ground stops in the New York City area. One was issued at LaGuardia Airport, in Queens, after a regional jet collided with a fire truck while landing on Sunday, killing the plane’s two pilots and injuring dozens. Flights resumed Monday afternoon. A briefer ground stop at Newark, which came in response to reports of a burning smell in an air-traffic control tower, was also lifted.
Reporting was contributed by Erica L. Green and Karoun Demirjian from Washington, Sarah Maslin Nir and Vikas Bajaj from New York, Mark Bonamo from Newark, Robert Chiarito from Chicago, Sean Keenan from Atlanta and Shannon Sims from Houston.
Jacey Fortin covers a wide range of subjects for The Times, including extreme weather, court cases and state politics across the country.
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