Scott Detrow

Democrats in Congress are refusing to fund the department unless the Trump administration agrees to changes over how ICE operates.

In the meantime, many TSA agents are calling in sick or quitting rather than keep working without pay.

And now ICE agents have been deployed to some airports across the country to assist the TSA.

To give us a sense of how airports around the U.S.

are managing all of this, we're joined by Keith Jeffries.

He is the former federal security director for TSA at Los Angeles International Airport.

Welcome.

I mean, just directly, what would you say the biggest security challenges are with this many workers being out, with lines being this long?

And is it fair to say that you're looking at the same dynamics, maybe magnified dynamics, of just what happens to human beings when they're made to wait in a long line, that the temper is going to be higher and that can lead to more problems?

So we're seeing a lot of agents, for one reason or another, not show up to work or take a few days off here and there due to the extenuating circumstances.

We are seeing these long, long lines.

We now have ICE involved at some airports.

My understanding is they're not doing direct passenger screening, and the initial reports are the wait times have not gone down at all.

Do you have a sense of what these ICE agents are doing at airports?

What would you recommend as a solution or a step that an airport can take to kind of minimize this?

We've been talking a lot about the challenge of managing the situation from a staffing point of view.

I'm wondering, given your expertise, given your background, what you would say to travelers right now, somebody who's getting on a plane this weekend and is pretty anxious about it.

That's Keith Jeffries, former federal security director for TSA at LAX.

These days he is the vice president for the K2 Security Screening Group.

Thanks for talking to us.