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Trump Threatens to Flood US Airports With ICE as Senate GOP Blocks Dem Bill to Pay TSA
"Trump's paramilitary army of ICE agents does not belong in our airports and is not properly trained to do this work," said one Democratic congresswoman.
Mar 22, 2026
As Senate Republicans on Saturday voted against advancing a Democratic bill to pay Transportation Security Administration workers during talks over Department of Homeland Security funding, GOP President Donald Trump tried to pin the blame for the partial DHS shutdown on Democrats and threatened to flood US airports with immigration agents.
The conduct of immigration agents under DHS—which oversees Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement—in US communities, particularly Minnesota's Twin Cites, led to the partial shutdown last month, with Democrats demanding reforms after CBP and ICE agents killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
While CBP and ICE can use the extra money they got last year in Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, other DHS agencies are more impacted by the shutdown, including TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Secret Service, and the Coast Guard. Some essential government employees have been working without pay for over a month.
Congress' April recess is rapidly approaching. The largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), warned Friday that "on March 27, about 47,000 TSA officers, 22,000 FEMA employees, 8,900 Coast Guard civilian staff, and hundreds of Border Patrol administrative personnel will miss another paycheck."
AFGE national president Everett Kelley said that the House of Representatives and Senate "have had weeks to fix this, and they have barely been in the same building."
"Members of Congress have walked past our TSA members at airport security checkpoints more often than they've met to negotiate an end to this stalemate," he continued. "Those officers deserve to be paid for the work they do to keep those members safe. The least Congress can do for these patriotic American workers is act before legislators leave town for the weekend, or, worse, head off on a weeks-long recess."
The Senate did meet on Saturday, when Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) argued that "it is unacceptable, unacceptable to say we will only pay TSA workers if it is attached to a bill that funds ICE with no reforms. But that's what Republicans have done. Democrats want to pay TSA workers ASAP, no strings attached. A yes vote on my motion would start doing that."
The vote was 41-49, with every GOP senator present voting "no." In response, Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) declared that "Senate Republicans voted against paying TSA agents because they insist on tying TSA funding to their push to give even more money to ICE—without basic reforms."
"That is not how this should work—and it is just plain wrong that Republicans are preventing TSA agents from getting paid while airport lines grow longer across the country," she said. "We could fund TSA and other important parts of DHS today—while we press ahead with negotiations on ICE and Border Patrol—if Republicans stopped standing in the way."
Meanwhile, as Americans at various airports contend with long lines due to TSA workers quitting or calling out, Trump said on his Truth Social platform Saturday that "the Radical Left Democrats have hurt so many people with their vicious and uncaring ways. What they have done to the Department of Homeland Security, our fantastic TSA Officers, and, most importantly, the great people of our Country, is an absolute disgrace. If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before!"
"The Fascist Democrats will never protect America, but the Republicans will," he added. "Just like the Radical Left allowed millions of Criminals to pour into our Country through their ridiculous and dangerous Open Border Policy, the Republicans closed it all down, and we now have the Strongest Border in American History. Likewise, I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, 'GET READY.' NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!"
Responding in a statement, Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said: "Republicans, we need you to speak up now. This is a national security nightmare. Democrats have been trying for weeks to get TSA funded. The votes to get that done have been there since before the shutdown began. ICE has continued to have access to a massive slush fund throughout this entire shutdown, which is why they're so readily available. Stop trying to tie additional funding for ICE to funding the rest of DHS."
"Trump's paramilitary army of ICE agents does not belong in our airports and is not properly trained to do this work," added Balint. "I ask my Republican colleagues: Stop submitting to the whims of this out-of-control president. You are risking national security by your silence and complicity. YOU can put an end to this. Say something. Fund TSA. For the sake of our country, show some damn courage!"
Apparently undeterred, Trump added Sunday that "on Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hard line criminals who have entered our Country illegally, are endangering the USA by holding back the money that was long ago agreed to with signed and sealed contracts, and all. But watch, no matter how great a job ICE does, the Lunatics leading the incompetent Dems will be highly critical of their work. THEY WILL DO A FANTASTIC JOB. The great Tom Homan is in charge!!!"
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'A Non-Starter': Critics Slam Amtrak Request for DHS Watchlist Screening of Passengers
One digital rights advocate called the expanded surveillance a "terrifying" development that could lead to people "facing some really negative outcomes."
Apr 06, 2022
Civil liberties defenders sounded the alarm Wednesday after Amtrak asked the Transportation Safety Administration to start screening passengers against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's federal master terrorism watchlist.
"From our decades of work on the watchlisting system, we know it's a due process nightmare and prone to error."
Hearst Television reports the train service's request is part of the Amtrak Rail Passenger Threat Assessment, by which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reviews a targeted individual's "personally identifiable information" against the federal Terrorist Screening Database, commonly called the watchlist.
Personally identifiable information includes but is not limited to Social Security, Alien Registration, and driver's license numbers; financial or medical documents; biometrics; and criminal records. DHS may also collect and review targeted travelers' publicly available social media information.
"This request raises significant civil liberties and rights concerns," ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi said in a statement. "From our decades of work on the watchlisting system, we know it's a due process nightmare and prone to error."
"The standards the government uses to place people on its massive master watchlist are vague, overbroad, and based on secret evidence," she added. "People on the watchlist are disproportionately people of color or immigrants, and can be wrongly stigmatized as terrorism suspects with no notice of their placement on the list or a meaningful opportunity to challenge it. Amtrak's request should be a non-starter and it needs to reverse course."
In an interview with Hearst Television, Saira Hussain, a staff attorney at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the expanded watchlist surveillance a "terrifying" development that could lead to people "facing some really negative outcomes when it comes to a contact with law enforcement should they be stopped for, you know, for like a broken tail light or something like that."
ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said that "it's a classic example of mission creep."
"Pretty soon we're going to have people walking through, you know, body scanners to go to a Little League game," he told Hearst Television. "We don't want to turn America into an airport."
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Are Mass Plane Travel and Mass Tourism Unsustainable?
The coronavirus pandemic is just a symptom of systemic problems the industries cannot resolve.
Mar 26, 2020
"Ah, for the days when flying was a gentleman's pursuit! - before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and 'jet off' to Raleigh-Durham." --Robert ("Sideshow Bob") Terwillinger, The Simpsons, "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming."
In recent weeks, the coronavirus pandemic's devastating effect on the airline and tourist industries has been graphically evident. Airlines cutting flights by 50 percent or more while hurtling towards bankruptcy; passengers in chaotic airport scenes as they try to get home before travel bans; Venice, Paris, Rome-- for once-- resembling ghost towns; leviathan cruise ships forlorn and empty, like Wagner's Flying Dutchman.
This might not be a temporary bump in the road for these industries, but a precursor to their long-term viability if they do not radically change their business models. Observers have for many years questioned the environmental sustainability of both industries. What's more, airline travel has become so onerous for passengers that a consumer rebellion could be brewing even without fears of infectious disease.
Tourism has long been cursed with an inherent paradox that recent events have thrown into sharp perspective. Since about 1980, airline travel has gradually ceased to be an adventure (in the positive sense), and come to resemble the Stations of the Cross. From nonexistent cabin service, to checked bag fees (causing the need to shoehorn everything into the overhead, forcing delays both entering and exiting the plane), to intricately tiered fees imposing a rigid class system (like the accommodations on the Titanic), to shrinking, jammed-in seats making the airliner resemble a winged sardine can, the lot of the traveler is not a happy one.
And all of that is simply what happens on the plane. Since 9/11, airports have come to resemble mini-Soviet Unions, with every passenger under quasi-military discipline (including the requirement to "hurry up and wait," familiar to every GI). There are subtle indignities like removing belt and shoes, and what has been described as "security theater" (it is in practical terms all-but impossible to take inert liquids into an aircraft restroom and mix them into an explosive, given the need for a pressure vessel and freezing temperatures, but maybe the vast wastage of water bottles is economic stimulus for the concessionaires' $2 water on the other side of the checkpoint).
Is all this flying really necessary? Perhaps the current virus outbreak will teach businesses sending their employees hither and yon that all the fancy teleconferencing gear they've bought is actually usable. And possibly the reason business travel has heretofore not been perceived as a burden is because it can be expensed. That may change as the health, as well as environmental, costs of plane travel become more pressing.
Under a distance of about 400 miles, airline travel for any purpose makes no sense, either environmentally or in terms of convenience. But Americans, seemingly alone among developed nations, are shackled to airlines if they don't want to go by automobile. High speed trains would solve the problem, but there is no will to build them, given higher priorities like multi-trillion-dollar stalemates in the Middle East and tax cuts for billionaires.
The entire tourism industry faces dilemmas on a similar scale. The paradox of tourism has been around for centuries. Samuel Johnson, the sage of 18th century London, was asked about his trip to visit the Giant's Causeway in Ireland: was it worth seeing? "Oh, it was worth seeing, he replied. "It just wasn't worth going to see."
I was reminded of Johnson's witticism a couple of months ago when I was inveigled to go to Thailand. "Sure," I thought. "Why not?" But interminably long flights across the International Date Line jet lagged me into uselessness for a few days in each direction. And although it occurred significantly before coronavirus peaked in East Asia, a subliminal but nagging fear of contamination accompanied every flight. And that was only the travel portion.
Thailand, slightly larger than California but with 30 million more people, is already a densely populated nation. At best a middle-income country, it simply cannot handle millions of foreign tourists. Resort regions like Phuket are vastly over-touristed and overbuilt with perpetually jammed roads, and showing signs of chronic pollution. And this was after the Christmas peak of European tourism and in the midst of local complaints that tourism was down because of the then-local virus problem in Wuhan.
Bangkok is now a polluted, overgrown Soylent Green stand-in, its city proper more heavily populated than New York. There might be more motor vehicles per capita there than in a comparably-sized U.S. city, with two-stroke motorcycles and tuk-tuks spewing out massive amounts of pollution in addition to noise that would wake the dead. (A single afternoon's use of one two-stroke leaf blower emits more pollution than a V-8 Ford F-150 Raptor driven cost-to-coast; keep that in mind when contemplating that the GOP dearly wants to abolish the EPA).
These phenomena are of course not limited to Thailand. All over the Third World, scenic places have become colonized by a metastasizing, lopsided overdevelopment due to mass tourism, one that not only ruins the point of going there in the first place, but also makes the local people dependent on an economic monoculture as pernicious in its own way to their unique cultures as the Central American banana plantations.
As for the developed world, once our current crisis is over, you'd better forget about contemplating the timeless beauty of the Venus de Milo at the Louvre, or retracing the steps of Thomas Mann's characters in a misty, twilit Venice. The Louvre is as crowded as Times Square on New Year's Eve, while a seven-story tall cruise liner dropping anchor rather spoils the view to the other side of the lagoon where Venice's spires evaporate in the moody dusk like wraiths.
Since at least the medieval religious pilgrimages, tourism has been heavily ridden by the cliched and the formulaic. But since the invention of the jet airliner, mass tourism has been swamped by the kitsch sensibility - the domestication, familiarization, and commodification of the so-called exotic experience. Disneyfication is no longer confined to Anaheim and Orlando, but suffuses African safaris, Icelandic jokull expeditions, and visits to Laotian hill tribes.
Mass air travel and mass tourism are inextricably linked, and you don't have to be Greta Thunberg to acknowledge their environmental unsustainability as currently configured, quite apart from negating the very reason for visiting something that is supposed to be outside of one's routinized experience. We need hardly add that the effects are contributing to the distinct possibility that Venice itself may sink beneath the waves altogether, although in the case of Miami's South Beach, my feelings are more ambiguous.
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