How ICE Went From Deport… to Airport
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Jess.
And Ryan. Tickets for our live show in Los Angeles are on sale now.
Join us Tuesday, April 28th at the El Rey Theater at 8 p.m. There'll be special guests, conversations about the business of Hollywood, and afterwards, we'll stick around to meet you all.
Find a link in our show notes to get your tickets before they sell out, which they did very quickly last time. See you there!
Waiting in the security line at the airport is never fun. But right now, it's really not fun. Because the lines these days are out of control. At Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, one of the busiest airports in the country, the TSA line stretches so far back, you can't even see where it starts.
This is actually still the TSA pre-check line. This line now wraps outside. So if you think about it, it wraps around the inside four different times.
In Houston, the security line doesn't just stretch. It descends. It curves past the departure zone, downstairs through baggage claim, and spills out onto yet another floor.
Stay at home. If you live in Houston and you have a flight today and it is not mandatory and it is leisure, do not come here. I'm literally on my way back home. I've turned around.
The lines are bad pretty much everywhere.
Whoever said the lines at JFK were fake are sabotaging you.
It's a huge pain for travelers. And it's all because of a government funding showdown in Washington.
It's because the Department of Homeland Security hasn't been funded for more than a month, which means TSA agents who are under DHS haven't gotten paychecks for more than a month, and they're starting to walk off the job.
That's our colleague Michelle Hackman. She says the shortage of TSA agents is getting really bad at airports across the U.S., Which is why, suddenly, a different kind of federal officer started showing up at many U.S. airports this week.
What are the current challenges at TSA checkpoints in airports?
Over the weekend, Trump announced on Truth Social that ICE was going to take over and help with airport security.
ICE. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency carrying out President Trump's mass deportation agenda. How unusual is it for ICE to step in at airports like this?
It's pretty unprecedented. I mean, obviously, we've been in this situation before where there have been government shutdowns and TSA has gone unpaid. But it's the first time that a president has thought, let's send in our immigration guys.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Wednesday, March 25th. Coming up on the show, how deportation officers ended up staffing America's airports.
The Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, was founded after 9-11 to centralize airport security under one agency, instead of leaving it up to the airlines or private contractors. It was meant to make airports safer, but the change also made airport security more vulnerable to political infighting. Now, every time there's a government shutdown, the TSA is affected.
There was a near-total government shutdown just a few months ago, and TSA was obviously a victim of that, too.
The last shutdown lasted 43 days and ended in November. Then, in January, after ICE officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, Democrats used a different budget deadline to pick another fight over government funding, this time specifically related to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS oversees ICE.
Democrats really stood their ground and said, we are not funding the Department of Homeland Security unless this administration agrees to some limits on ISIS powers, some sort of guardrails on how they're allowed to operate.
And so what is it specifically that Democrats are demanding?
They want a few things. I would say their two biggest demands are that ICE shouldn't be allowed to wear masks to cover their faces. And the other big one has to do with judicial warrants. Basically, there's this issue where ICE has said, We've decided unilaterally, and they did so actually secretly. They didn't even announce this policy change or even widely circulate it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:05
2
What are the current challenges at TSA checkpoints in airports?
2:05–8:20
3
Why are TSA agents walking off the job during the government shutdown?
8:20–10:35
4
How did ICE become involved in airport security operations?
10:35–12:41
5
What are the implications of deploying ICE at airports?
12:41–18:54