White House border czar Tom Homan suggested Sunday that ICE agents deployed to airports may remain there even after Transportation Security Agency officers are paid this week.
Speaking to CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Homan said “we’ll see” when host Jake Tapper asked whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will leave airports after TSA personnel are paid. Homan said some of that decision will depend on whether TSA agents “come back to work.”
“I’m working very closely with the TSA administrator and the ICE director to decide what airport needs what,” Homan said. ICE agents, he said, “are keeping the security at the airport at a high level, again, because of heightened threat that we’re in right now.”
TSA agents, Homan said, will get paid “hopefully by tomorrow or Tuesday” after President Donald Trump issued an order Friday to use preexisting funds for the paychecks. Trump’s move came after Congress failed to strike a deal to end the shutdown of much of the Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s good news, because these TSA officers are struggling,” Homan said about the paychecks Sunday. “They’re sitting there right now, working very hard, not being paid by members of Congress [who are] out on vacation getting paid. It’s ridiculous.”
Airports around the nation have recorded lengthy wait lines at TSA checkpoints, and nearly 500 TSA officers have quitduring the shutdown. On Friday, lines for security at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport stretched outside and wrapped around the building’s exterior. Wait times have gotten so excessive that some travelers are hiring line-sitters.
The president’s emergency paychecks for TSA officers may lessen wait times in the coming days, but it does not solve the issue of the ongoing DHS shutdown, which reached 44 days on Sunday.
On Friday night, the Republican-led House rejected a measure the Senate passed earlier in the day to fund most of DHS. The bipartisan Senate bill would have funded TSA and the rest of DHS, except for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection. The House bill would have funded the entire department for eight weeks. Neither bill includes reforms for ICE and CBP that Democrats have demanded.
While House Republicans voted for their version of the bill, only three House Democrats voted for it. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said House Democrats would’ve supported the Senate bill had House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) let it reach the floor. Both chambers left Washington this weekend for recess without a solution.
Democrats and Republicans on Sunday traded blame for the stalemate.
House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), speaking to ABC News’s “This Week,” defended the House’s rejection of the bipartisan Senate proposal, arguing that Congress should not block funding for ICE and parts of CBP.
“This is no time to be defunding major operations at the Department of Homeland Security,” Scalise said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), however, told ABC News that Democrats would continue to block additional ICE funding and that the White House had not offered “meaningful reforms” after the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents.
“We want to fully fund TSA,” Van Hollen said. “We could get rid of these lines at the airports immediately. But we also made clear that we’re going to demand reforms of a lawless ICE operation.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), speaking to CNN after Homan, accused Trump and House Republicans of standing in the way of DHS funding.
“This shutdown should have ended” Friday, Kim said. “What the Trump administration is clearly doing is going against the demands from the American people.”
Trump’s order to pay TSA workers directs Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and the Office of Management and Budget to work together to “use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits” that they are owed until “regular funding for TSA has been restored.”
When asked by Tapper why Trump didn’t release funds for TSA officers earlier, Homan sidestepped the question.
“I’m a cop. I don’t understand the whole appropriations language, appropriations law,” Homan said. “I’m just glad that President Trump is able to pay the TSA agents.”
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