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Government shutdown, partial or otherwise, are a terrible way to make policy and spending decisions. That said, there is no reason that TSA agents should have to work without pay at the nation’s airports. Worse, sending ICE agents to airports, to essentially stand around watching the unpaid TSA workers, is in no way a solution.
The solution is for members of Congress to agree to a spending plan to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration and a variety of other agencies. The difficulty for Republicans is to overcome the objections of President Donald Trump, who is now tying TSA funding to his voter suppression efforts.
Many DHS operations have been unfunded since mid-February as part of a dispute over the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration agents have shot and killed two American citizens who were observing — some would say protesting — immigration enforcement activities in Minnesota. In an operation inhumanely dubbed “Catch of the Day,” ICE says it arrested 200 people in Maine in January. Documentation suggests that most of these people were in the U.S. legally and did not have criminal records.
Democrats in Congress have asked for modest reforms at ICE, such as requiring that agents wear name badges and body cameras and that they not wear masks that cover their faces. Democrats voted against funding bills that did not include these measures. They have put forward a half dozen bills that would fund all Homeland Security Operations other than ICE unless such measures were included. Those have been rejected by Republican lawmakers.
Because of the stalemate, TSA workers, members of the Coast Guard and FEMA and other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security have been working without pay for more than a month. But, not ICE. It was funded separately by Congress this summer.
It is also worth noting that airline passengers are already paying for TSA. When the Transportation Security Administration was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, surcharges were added to every airline ticket in the U.S. The fees — $11.20 for a round-trip ticket — were meant to cover most of the new agency’s operations. Congress has since taken that money and allocated it to other things, like reducing the federal deficit. So, every time Americans buy an airline ticket, they still are still charged the September 11 Security Fee, which was meant to pay the salaries of TSA workers, but Congress has diverted that money elsewhere.
In recent days, long lines at airports have gotten the public’s and politicians’ attention. Many airport security checkpoints are shortstaffed as more than 400 TSA agents have quit and large numbers have been calling out sick.
None of this was necessary, as a Republican U.S. senator explained earlier this week. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said a compromise was within reach last week, but President Trump rejected it.
“It would have worked. We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week, but the president said no deals,” Kennedy told Fox News on Monday.
The deal would have funded all of DHS except for ICE, which received an additional $75 billion in this summer’s Big Beautiful Bill.
Trump has instead tried to leverage the shutdown and airport chaos to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would place a number of burdensome restrictions on voting.
This should be a nonstarter. The SAVE America Act is a solution in search of a problem. In the name of fighting voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, it would require voter ID and set new standards for voter registration, which would be especially burdensome to people who have changed their names.
Tying these two issues together and trying to sneak a voter suppression bill through Congress under the guises of ending airport security check delays is politics at its worst. The SAVE America Act should be rejected. An agreement to fund DHS while putting reasonable restrictions on ICE should stand on its own.
Trump upped the ante this week by sending ICE agents, who are not trained to screen passengers to detect terrorists and explosives, to numerous airports. Video and photographs from several airports showed ICE agents largely standing around, chatting and sipping coffee while TSA agents continued to do the work of screening passengers. The ICE agents were paid; the TSA agents were not.
“They’re just in the way,” Pascual Contreras, a TSA union leader, said of ICE agents in airports.
Trump on Monday acknowledged that the ICE agents would look for illegal immigrants at the airports, calling airports “fertile territory.” He also threatened to bring in the National Guard. Again, this does nothing to make security lines move more quickly.
Others in the Trump orbit have suggested that deploying ICE to airports is a “test run” to get the American public used to seeing these agents, who could then be deployed to polling places in this year’s election.
Again, all of this is unnecessary. Members of Congress have had several opportunities to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while setting modest safeguards on ICE activity. TSA agents should be paid. ICE agents aren’t needed at airports (or polling places). And, Trump’s voter suppression bill should be debated (and rejected) on its own, not snuck through using long airport security lines as cover.
