Tom Homan, the White House border czar, confirmed on Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be deployed to U.S. airports on Monday, casting the operation largely as an effort to ease long lines that have caused frustration among travelers during one of the busiest travel seasons.
President Trump announced the measure on Saturday, first as a threat aimed at pressuring congressional Democrats to agree to a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration, and then as an aggressive operation. He said agents would “do security like no one has ever seen before,” which would include “the immediate arrest of all illegal immigrants who have come into our Country.”
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Mr. Homan said that his agency was drawing up plans for deployment and stressed that ICE agents would help support security officials whose ranks have thinned as thousands have gone without pay amid a partial government shutdown.
“It’s a work in progress, but we will be at airports tomorrow, helping T.S.A. move those lines along,” Mr. Homan said.
With the deployment less than 24 hours away, administration officials apparently have not nailed down many details. Mr. Homan said that “his opinion” was that agents would concentrate on airports with long wait times at security, prioritizing ones with lines of about three hours. He said that agency heads were still discussing how many agents to deploy, how quickly to deploy them and to where.
He said more concrete plans would be made this afternoon.
“When we deploy them more, we’ll have a well-thought-out plan to execute,” Mr. Homan said.
Mr. Homan noted that ICE agents were already in airports, and that they were equipped to cover exits and other areas that T.S.A. workers are now staffing in order to free up agents to do screenings and other functions.
“This is about helping T.S.A. do their mission, and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can, while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols,” he said. “We’re simply there to help T.S.A. do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise.”
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, blasted Mr. Trump’s idea on Sunday.
“The last thing the American people need is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports across the country potentially to brutalize or to kill them,” he said, referring to the killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Michael Gold contributed reporting from Washington.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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