Sending ICE officers to the airport because of long lines at security checkpoints is a hilariously bad idea. When Trump announced the ICE deployment via Truth Social over the weekend, people immediately wondered what exactly ICE could do to address the problem. It did not seem like he was saying that ICE personnel would help screen passengers (ICE are not trained on any of the equipment that TSA uses to screen passengers). So what would they be doing other than standing around and making crowded airports even more crowded?
Apparently yes, that is exactly what they are doing.
But the thing that makes Trump's decision to assign ICE to airports so ridiculous is that is is an astoundingly bad political move for Trump, for at least these reasons:
- ICE is really unpopular. If you are the President and want to bolster support for your go-to thuggish organization, having them go to where people are really frustrated and then stand there and do nothing to relieve the frustration is just going to make people hate them more.
- It links ICE to TSA funding. The whole reason that TSA funding has not passed is because the Democrats will only pass funding for the Department of Homeland Security (which includes the TSA) if the funding bill includes legal restrictions on ICE. Even though ICE is really unpopular, there is some risk to that strategy because the Administration can argue that because ICE funding had already passed last year, Democrats' condition for funding the TSA had nothing to do with that organization. By sending ICE to "assist" the TSA, Trump is making an ICE-TSA connection that makes the funding conditions seem to make more sense.
- It undermines the Administration's argument that ICE officers must wear masks. Since Trump regained the presidency, ICE agents started wearing masks when they made their immigration arrests. Masked law enforcement officers is associated with human rights violations across the world. But the Trump Administration has argued it is necessary to make sure that ICE agents don't get doxxed. (Meaning publicly identified. That is not really what "doxxing" means, but that is what the Administration now claims doxxing is). The masking of ICE agents is a big deal. A ban on their masks is one of the conditions that Democrats have attached to their Homeland Security funding bills. And yet, ICE agents are not wearing masks in the airport. So now it is pretty clear that the Administration doesn't care if ICE officers can be publicly identified. They just don't want them to be publicly identified when they are abusing the civil rights of immigrants and minorities on the streets, which makes Democrats' condition for DHS funding seem a whole lot more reasonable.
- It will help groups identify ICE officers who have committed illegal acts and human rights violations. A bunch of groups I follow have urged people to photograph unmasked ICE agents in airports and to send the photos to groups who are trying to identify the perpetrators of abusive conduct by masked agents. In other words, this deployment is helping Trump's opponents to build a database of ICE agents which will help those groups identify individuals who commit human rights abuses at other places, the very conduct the Trump Administration is trying to hide by having them wear masks in the first place.
- Sending ICE to chaotic airports reinforces the idea that ICE is an agent of chaos not law and order.
- It wastes ICE's time and money. Every ICE officer standing around doing nothing in an airport hallway is one less officer who can raid someone's home or snatch them from a car. This deployment also costs money which will help spend down the obscene budget that Congress passed for ICE last year. Very few undocumented people ever fly. So this might slow down the Steve Miller ethnic cleansing program, at least by a little bit.
Those are the things that immediately come to mind for me. I am sure there are more.
