ALSO SEE: ICE Agents Will Be Deployed to US Airports on Monday to Ease Long Lines

Trump and border czar Tom Homan confirm plan to assist TSA agents amid partial government shutdown standoff

Donald Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, have followed through on promises from the president’s administration to send in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to US airports beginning on Monday to assist with security amid extremely long lines – and to help airport security agents who have been working without pay since 14 February because of a partial government shutdown.

ICE agents were seen at airports such as Atlanta, Newark, New Orleans and New York’s John F Kennedy. CNN reported nine other airports where ICE agents were seen.

Trump said on Sunday that Homan would lead the effort.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said “ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful [Transportation Security Administration] Agents who have stayed on the job despite” the shutdown resulting from a US Senate deadlock over stricter regulations on federal immigration enforcement.

Homan, meanwhile, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday and said: “We will be at the airports tomorrow.” It remained unclear what responsibilities ICE officers will have, and Homan said on Sunday that details were still being finalized.

“There’s TSA agents covering exits. People that enter through the exits. Certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit, make sure people don’t go through those exits, enter an airport through the exits,” he said on CNN.

“Stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines. I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that. There’s certain parts of security that TSA’s doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs and help them move those lines.”

More than 400 TSA agents have left their jobs since the partial government shutdown began, according to NBC News, and others are calling out sick. There have been crippling, hours-long waits at security checkpoints run by the TSA across the US.

Images showed lines out to the parking lot at New Orleans’ airport on Sunday and at New York’s LaGuardia airport earlier in the weekend. Lines at airports such as Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental were long on Monday as ICE agents began being spotted at the facilities.

There was video of the line at Bush airport on Monday stretching out to a facility subway station.

“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said of the deployment. The priority, he said, was “the large airports where there’s a long wait, like three hours”.

Homan pledged to have “a plan by the end of today, where we’re sending – what airports we’re starting with and where we’re sending them”.

Senate Democrats have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the TSA, seeking reforms after immigration agents killed US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in separate incidents in January.

Pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on how well thought out the plan could be if it was still being finalized on Sunday, Homan said: “How much of a plan does it mean [sic] to guard an exit to make sure no one comes through an exit?”

Trump had said on Saturday that ICE agents at airports would “do security like no one has ever seen before”.

“Bad idea,” said Lisa Murkowski, a senator from Alaska, about the new airport security plan.

“What we need to do is, we need to get the DHS issues resolved, we need to get the TSA agents paid,” she told reporters at the US Capitol, where the Senate held a rare weekend session. “Do you really want to have even additional tensions on top of what we are already facing?”

The Trump administration has deployed ICE agents for immigration crackdowns across the country, a move that – in addition to the killings of US citizens – has led to civil rights violations.

The US House’s Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, came out strongly against ICE agents at airports in his own appearance on CNN.

“The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or in some instances kill them,” Jeffries said. “We have already seen how ICE conducts itself.”

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 TSA workers, condemned Trump’s plan, saying in a statement that ICE agents were not trained or certified in aviation security.

“Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe,” Kelley said on Sunday. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”

A joint statement from US flight attendant unions criticized what they portrayed as the failure to pay TSA workers and the choice “to create havoc in our airports”.

“This latest threat of ICE invasion at the airports is another distraction from solutions that protect Americans,” the statement continued.

“Flight attendants will not allow the TSA … and the frontline [security officers] who keep us safe to be used as pawns in this dangerous game, nor will we fly in an aviation system that doesn’t put our safety and security first.”