Leaders of a union representing Transportation Safety Administration workers blasted the Trump administration’s deployment of immigration enforcement agents to airports, which the government claims will help alleviate long security lines but the union calls a pointless distraction.
“No way ICE can guarantee safety of the passengers,” Hydrick Thomas, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees T.S.A. Council 100 union, told reporters at a news conference, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “All ICE is doing is just getting in the way.”
The Trump administration began stationing ICE officials at airports around the country on Monday, ostensibly to back up T.S.A. officials, who have been working without pay for the last 39 days amid a partial government shutdown. At many airports, missed paychecks have led to increased absences among T.S.A. workers, as they seek other sources of income. Those absences, in turn, have led to long security lines.
But ICE has not been much help, union leaders said.
“The administration sent ICE agents to airports as replacement workers. That’s like giving a person dying of pneumonia a teaspoon of cough syrup,” said Everett Kelley, the national president of A.F.G.E. “It doesn’t address the problem, and it’s not going to work.”
President Trump declared over the weekend that agents would not just seek to help T.S.A. officers, but would arrest illegal immigrants, though he later said that wasn’t their main purpose there and they should not wear masks. Union officials representing T.S.A. workers said that complicates their jobs.
Mr. Thomas told reporters that the ICE personnel being deployed to most airports had not been trained in T.S.A. functions and could not help with screening passengers.
D.H.S., which is not getting any new funding during the shutdown, did not respond to a request for comment.
“The ICE officers in Atlanta are not doing any screening functions,” said Aaron Barker, a union chief based at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, adding: “it has nothing to do with the wait time.”
Others complained that putting ICE officials, who have been paid through the shutdown, in proximity to T.S.A. workers, who have not, was an added source of tension. ICE has been able to draw on tens of billions of dollars Congress approved last year as part of a domestic policy bill to pay its officials, despite the lapse in appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is an insult to the employees,” added Johnny Jones, a local union chief based in Dallas.
ICE’s deployment had already produced a chilling effect, Mr. Jones added, noting that some restaurants at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, where he is stationed, had not opened because their immigrant employees feared being targeted if they came to work.
Several local union chiefs also said they feared that the deployment was a sign that the Trump administration was trying to show that T.S.A. agents were replaceable.
The union representing T.S.A. workers has been locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over efforts to dissolve it, which some leaders fear is a precursor to privatizing their job functions.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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