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President Donald Trump ordered on Monday the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to at least 14 airports across the United States to address the mass absenteeism of TSA workers, who have been working for over five weeks without pay due to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in effect since February 14, 2026.
A senior ICE official confirmed to NBC News that there will be at least 50 agents per shift at each affected airport. However, they will not operate magnetometers or X-ray machines, but will focus on crowd control, queue monitoring, and identification checks before the security areas.
The partial shutdown of the DHS has left around 60,000 agency employees —including approximately 45,000 TSA officers at 440 airports— working without pay.
The absenteeism rate at the TSA reached 11.76% on Sunday, with dramatic peaks at individual airports: New Orleans Louis Armstrong (42.3%), Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (41.5%), and New York's JFK (37.4%), causing wait times of up to four hours at major terminals across the country.
The 14 airports with confirmed ICE presence are O'Hare in Chicago, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, JFK, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty, Philadelphia, Phoenix Sky Harbor, Houston Hobby, Houston Bush Intercontinental, New Orleans Louis Armstrong, Pittsburgh, Fort Myers Southwest Florida International, Cleveland Hopkins, and Luis Muñoz Marín in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The so-called "border czar" Tom Homan announced on Sunday on CNN that agents would begin this Monday, prioritizing airports with the longest wait times. Homan coordinated the deployment with the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, and the acting administrator of the TSA, Ha Nguyen McNeill.
In Terminal 3 of O'Hare, armed DHS agents were observed in a hallway connecting the secure area with the main terminal, although an officer indicated that they were not checking identifications at that point.
Trump attributed the initiative to himself and compared it to the invention of the paperclip. "Do you know the story of the paperclip? 182 years ago, a man discovered the paperclip. It was so simple, and everyone who saw it said, 'Why didn't I think of that?' ICE was my idea".
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