Amid the continuing partial government shutdown, President Donald Trump has come up with an outside-the-box solution: Send ICE agents to do airport security.
The proposal came in a Truth Social post, presented as one long run-on sentence:
“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota. I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
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It’s a particularly rambling post, even by Trump standards, as he appears to start out talking about the nation at large, before moving to talking specifically about Minnesota.
There are various holes in this idea, starting with ICE agents not being trained in airport security, and the “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia” appearing to be an admission of discriminatory policy.
“The spending impasse has left TSA workers without pay for two weeks, prompting some to call in sick and leading to lengthy delays at major US airports during the busy spring-break season. Although Democrats have repeatedly sought to fund TSA alone, those efforts have been blocked by Republicans,” Bloomberg News reported.
Trump is threatening to place ICE agents at airports in place of the TSA and says they will arrest “illegal immigrants” entering the country — but people generally don’t arrive at airports without a visa or from a visa-waiver country.
Those who enter through airports typically… pic.twitter.com/glKqZ2BriQ
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 21, 2026
“If Trump follows through with the plan, it would mean a new, high-profile role for ICE, even as the administration has sought to downplay immigration arrests after the agency’s turbulent and controversial enforcement actions in Minnesota that led to the shooting deaths of two US citizens.”
