Federal immigration agents will begin deploying to American airports as early as this week, with Border Czar Tom Homan confirming on CNN that ICE officers will supplement a depleted TSA workforce stretched thin by the ongoing partial government shutdown. New York politicians and advocates responded with alarm, calling the move a dangerous escalation.

Homan framed the deployment as routine. “We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time. So it’s not going to change,” he said. But critics across the city saw something far from routine in the decision to send armed immigration officers into some of the country’s busiest travel hubs.

The backdrop is a federal funding deadlock that has left TSA and customs workers going without paychecks for more than five weeks. On Friday alone, as many as 10 percent of TSA employees called out sick, compared to a typical absentee rate of around 2 percent. Hundreds of workers have quit outright. The images circulating online of sprawling airport lines have put pressure on Washington to act, but advocates and union leaders say the response on offer is the wrong one entirely.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees and head of the TSA union, condemned the plan in sharp terms. “More than 50,000 TSA employees have worked without pay for over five weeks. Hundreds have quit. And Washington’s answer isn’t to pay them. It’s to send ICE agents to do their jobs,” he said. “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. They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”

Homan has specified that ICE officers will not conduct screenings or operate X-ray equipment, but will serve in a security capacity. That distinction did little to satisfy critics watching from New York, where JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark serve tens of millions of passengers each year.

The Port Authority, which oversees the region’s major airports, said it was monitoring the situation carefully. A spokesperson said the agency expects any deployed federal personnel to be “appropriately trained and focused on supporting screening operations, consistent with maintaining the safety, integrity, and efficiency of the security process.” The Port Authority was careful to note that decisions about deploying federal personnel rest with the Department of Homeland Security, not with the regional authority.

In Midtown Manhattan, Father Fabian Aries of Saint Peter’s Church, who has spent years helping individuals detained by immigration authorities, told amNewYork the move fits a pattern. He described the administration as operating with deliberate disregard for constitutional protections, and said the airport deployment is less about airport security than about spreading fear through immigrant communities.

That concern resonates deeply in a city where roughly one in three residents is foreign-born. For many New Yorkers who travel through the city’s airports, or who have family members doing so, the prospect of ICE agents stationed at checkpoints carries a weight that goes beyond long lines and delayed flights.

New York has consistently pushed back against federal immigration enforcement priorities since Trump returned to office in January 2025. City officials have reaffirmed the city’s sanctuary policies, and the congressional delegation has been among the most vocal in opposing sweeping deportation operations. The airport deployment puts that tension into one of the most public, high-traffic settings imaginable.

The practical questions are also unresolved. TSA screeners undergo specialized training for checkpoint operations. ICE officers, whatever their law enforcement credentials, are not trained for those specific functions. The union’s warning about “untrained, armed agents” speaks to a real operational gap that the Port Authority’s careful language about “appropriate training” does not fully address.

For New Yorkers flying out of JFK or LaGuardia this week, the experience at the security line may look different. Whether that difference makes the process safer or more fraught is a question playing out in real time.