President Trump said he is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports as some air travelers face longer security lines due to the partial government shutdown.

“On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job,” Trump posted on social media Sunday.

The Trump administration has blamed Democrats for the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has entered its sixth week and paused paychecks for Transportation Security Administration workers.

“This pointless, reckless shutdown of our homeland security workforce has caused more than 400 TSA officers to quit and thousands to call out from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told NPR in an email.

She said this has caused hours-long delays for travelers across the country, and said the agency will deploy “hundreds” of ICE officers “to airports being adversely impacted.”

DHS did not respond to NPR’s question of where ICE agents will be deployed.

But Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Sunday evening that agents would be at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to help with “line management and crowd control.” In a statement, he said federal agents “indicated that this deployment is not intended to conduct immigration enforcement activities.”

The head of the union that represents TSA officers denounced the plan to send ICE to airports.

“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Sunday.

He said TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats designed to evade detection at checkpoints.

“They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be,” he added.

The ACLU also issued a statement condemning the move, saying immigration agents at airports could “inspire fear among families.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., echoed that concern.

“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 on CNN.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, “is in charge” of the ICE deployment, Trump said. TSA and ICE are both part of DHS.

But it remains unclear exactly how the operation will work at airports.

“It’s a work in progress,” Homan said on CNN Sunday. “But we will be at airports tomorrow helping TSA move those lines along.”

Unclear duties for ICE agents

Homan said he is talking with the heads of ICE and TSA to finalize a plan, but said he expects ICE agents to relieve TSA agents of guard duty at some terminal entries and exits.

“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that,” Homan said. “There are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs, help move those lines.”

But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to have a different idea of what ICE agents could do at airports.

“They know how to run the X-ray machines because they are again under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy told ABC Sunday.

Duffy then warned that wait times at airports would get much worse if Congress doesn’t fund DHS by the end of next week, when TSA workers are set to miss another paycheck.

“I think you’re going to see more TSA agents — as we come to Thursday, Friday, Saturday of next week — they’re going to quit or they’re not going to show up,” Duffy said.

Scant negotiations progress

Last week, Congress failed to advance a DHS funding bill for the fifth time, leaving TSA, FEMA and other agencies in the lurch. ICE, on the other hand, still has plenty of funding after Congress allocated the the agency billions of dollars last summer as part of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The DHS shutdown started following the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minnesota. The killings sparked demands from Democrats to change ICE policy: a judicial warrant requirement, and a ban on ICE agents wearing masks, among other proposed changes.

It was not immediately clear whether ICE agents deployed to airports would wear masks, as many of them do during immigration enforcement.

Homan said he met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week to discuss DHS funding, but he gave no indication that a deal was nearing.

“More conversations need to be had because we certainly can’t surrender ICE’s authorities and their congressionally mandated job,” Homan said Sunday.

As for the ICE operation at airports, Homan said agents will continue to enforce immigration laws as they deploy to terminals and security lines.

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden contributed to this story.

President Donald Trump said border czar Tom Homan will be in charge of deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports on Monday, with Homan telling CNN the agents will help with security at entrances and exits to ease the Transportation Security Administration’s workload.

“This is about … helping TSA do their mission and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols,” Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Airports around the country have seen long security lines, as TSA officers have quit or called out sick as they work without pay amid a partial government shutdown. Homan said his “opinion is that we concentrate on the airports where the longest waits are; we prioritize those large airports with those long waits like three hours.”

“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise, such as screening through the X-ray machine. Not trained in that? We won’t do that,” Homan said. “But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant roles, such as guarding an exit so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker.”

The border czar said ICE will continue conducting immigration enforcement operations while aiding TSA. He added the heads of ICE and the TSA are involved in planning discussions, and that the public can expect more details of “a well-thought-out plan to execute” later Sunday.

Trump first announced the move to deploy ICE agents on social media Saturday, as lawmakers worked toward reaching an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security amid mounting travel disruptions. Democrats have refused to fund the department as they demand changes that would rein in Trump’s immigration policies after two people were killed during an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats on Sunday of holding TSA “hostage” while expressing gratitude that the White House will deploy ICE agents to airports.

“Thankfully, ICE will bring sanity to our airports starting tomorrow, but it’s far past time for Democrats to fund DHS,” he posted on X.

Bipartisan appropriators held a brief meeting with Homan on Friday evening that sources from both parties called “productive.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Sunday he hoped to meet with Homan after another bipartisan meeting was postponed a day earlier.

Talks are expected to continue Sunday as Republicans await a counteroffer from Democrats after receiving a proposal from the White House on Friday. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing to reach a deal by the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Two of the big sticking points remain whether to require judicial warrants on immigration enforcement action and to require ICE agents to remove their masks — both key Democratic demands that the White House has resisted.

Senators are eager to wrap up talks and pass a bill before Easter recess at week’s end, meaning a deal needs to be reached within the next couple of days to begin the legislative process to meet that timeframe.

Thune said Sunday that lawmakers were making “some headway” in talks to reopen DHS, warning that things could get “pretty bad” if a deal isn’t reached in the coming days.

He said the Trump administration’s plans to send ICE agents to airports to help bolster TSA staffing is “evidence of how sort of desperate things have become at our airports.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told “State of the Union” on Sunday the plan to send ICE agents to airports was an effort to “squeeze lawmakers to try to finally come up with a plan to fund DHS.”

“It’s unfortunate that Republicans have decided that they would rather force TSA agents to work without pay, inconvenience millions of Americans all across the country and now potentially expose them to untrained ICE agents and create chaos at airports throughout the land, rather than get ICE agents under control,” Jeffries said.

On Saturday, Republican Sen. John Kennedy told CNN “it could help” to send ICE agents to airports, but suggested that it’s not a definitive solution to the long security lines.

“If they’re planning on using some of the ICE folks to help with crowd control to free up TSA people to do the screening, I could see a scenario where that might help.”

Meanwhile, the union representing TSA officers is fiercely pushing back against plans to deploy ICE agents to airports, warning the move could put passenger safety at risk.

American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley said in a statement Sunday that “Replacing unpaid TSA workers with ICE agents is not a solution, but a dangerous escalation.”

“ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” Kelley said, stressing that TSA officers spend months developing highly specialized skills to detect explosives, weapons and sophisticated threats designed to evade screening. “You cannot improvise that.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.