President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would send ICE agents to airports around the U.S. on Monday amid an ongoing standoff between Senate Republicans and Democrats over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
"If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before!" he wrote in one of several posts on Truth Social, adding later, "I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, 'GET READY.'"
The move came hours after the president first threatened to move ICE agents to airports, writing in a post on Truth Social earlier Saturday, "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."
In the first post, Trump also said ICE agents’ work in airports would include “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country.”
His comments come as Senate Republicans on Saturday blocked a Democratic effort to pass a stand-alone bill to fund TSA in a 41-49 vote and a day after Senate Democrats voted down Republicans’ efforts to pass a bill to fully fund DHS, which has been partially shut down since mid-February.
Following the rare Saturday vote, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a key negotiator for Democrats on making a deal to end the partial shutdown, accused Republicans of tying TSA funding to ICE funding.
“Today, Senate Republicans voted against paying TSA agents because they insist on tying TSA funding to their push to give even more money to ICE — without basic reforms. That is not how this should work — and it is just plain wrong that Republicans are preventing TSA agents from getting paid while airport lines grow longer across the country,” Murray said.
The shutdown has led Transportation Security Administration officers who conduct security checks at U.S. airports to go unpaid, leading to callouts en masse and lengthy security lines at airports across the country.
ICE, another agency under DHS, is not affected by the ongoing shutdown, as that agency received $75 billion in additional funds from the “big, beautiful bill,” the president’s major legislative package that was passed and signed into law last year.
In February, Democrats vowed to shut down DHS until Republicans agreed to new checks on ICE agents such as requiring them to wear identification and banning them from wearing face coverings.
The move came after two Americans — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed by federal law enforcement in Minnesota in January during a major immigration crackdown in the state.
This week, bipartisan negotiators on Capitol Hill met with fresh energy to work to end the shutdown. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, met with a bipartisan group of senators twice this week, but a third planned meeting between him and the senators Saturday evening was postponed, multiple sources told NBC News. The senators hoped to hold the meeting Sunday, a Democratic aide told NBC News.
One lawmaker, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters on Friday that Republicans offered Democrats a new proposal this week.
“We’ve offered body cams, more training, limiting arrests for sensitive areas like churches and hospitals and so forth, schools, it’s a long list,” Hoeven said. “I think the Democrats need to come back to us now and talk to us about what they’re willing to do.”
Also this week, senators on a key committee weighed the president’s nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to lead DHS. Earlier this month, Trump said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would step down at the end of March and that Mullin would be nominated as her replacement.
In remarks on the floor Saturday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., blamed Democrats for long TSA lines, saying, “The situation at U.S. airports continues to worsen thanks to Democrats’ refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Thousands of Homeland Security employees have been working without pay for more than a month. The problems of having an unfunded Homeland Security Department continue to multiply, and Democrats, well, they just seem to shrug.”
Later, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor, “It is unacceptable for workers and travelers in entire airports to get taken hostage in political games, but that is what the Republicans are doing. It is unacceptable to say we will only pay TSA workers if it is attached to a bill that funds ICE with no reforms, but that’s what the Republicans have been doing. Democrats want to pay TSA workers ASAP with no strings attached.”
