ICE versus TSA

Unfortunately for TSA employees, they are a part of the Department of Homeland Security. So is ICE. And because ICE has a tendency to act like the Gestapo, Democrats in Congress are refusing to fund ICE and that means not funding DHS. Not paying their officers means the TSA is having a hard time adequately staffing their airport operations.

To make things worse, as is his modu operandi, Trump has decided he won’t sign any solution to DHS funding until Congress passes the SAVE Act, which is widely seen as an effort to reduce turnout in elections. He is, in effect, holding his own administration hostage.

Fortunately for ICE agents, the misnamed Big Beautiful Bill funded ICE outside the normal budgetary process. So ICE agents are being paid.

In what Trump and Trump alone sees as a solution, he has decreed that ICE agents should be sent to airports to assist the TSA and alleviate the staffing shortage. Trump put as much thought into the implications of this act as he did deciding to bomb Iran again—none at all.

This means the Administration ignored the reality that ICE aren’t trained to do TSA agents’ jobs. So ICE agents get paid to hang out and do nothing, while TSA agents are unpaid and get no help. On the bright side, deploying ICE has made people more sympathetic towards TSA agents. That’s something.

sketchier