TSA has lost 500+ workers out of its 50,000 listed staff…
Some airports have virtually no backups….
Some have LONG…VERY LONG Lines…..
ICE people are NOT screeners….
Most image’s in the media show them milling around or helping with minor tasks….
And the TSA people are NOT happy with their presence were they work….
Reports ARE that Trump & Co. see ICE airport presence as way to try influence Democrats to settle on a DHS Spending deal….That has NOT worked…Actually?…Custom Border Patrol people ARE assigned TO Airports primarily to cargo functions…
The word is the money to start paying salaries will be in the system shortly….
The money for the payroll will come from OTHER Homeland Security places as per Trump’s executive order ….
Which should mean that the new DHS boss Mullins will have to figure what he take the money from….
In addition?
ICE people in airports means they are NOT hunting people in the streets….
Mullins has Trump’s henchman Miller to contend with….
We’ll see how much leeway Mullin has of Homan , the Immigration car and Miller in doing things that will allow Democrats in the Senate to approve the whole Homeland Spending Budget for this year…
Mullin HAS a tightrope to walk….
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could remain at U.S. airports, where President Trump had sent them to respond to a shortage of security employees during a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, even after those employees are paid again, Mr. Trump’s chief border official said on Sunday.
“It depends how many T.S.A. agents come back to work,” the White House border czar, Tom Homan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring to the Transportation Security Administration. “How many T.S.A. agents have actually quit and have no plan coming back to work? I’m working very closely with the T.S.A. administrator and the ICE director to decide what airport needs what.”
Mr. Homan added later, in an appearance on CBS, that ICE agents would stay “until the airports feel like they’re 100 percent” and “normal operations” resume.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order Friday to pay T.S.A. employees as Congress remains at an impasse over funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Department officials have said about 50,000 T.S.A. officers should receive paychecks as early as Monday. But it is unlikely that pay will immediately alleviate operational challenges at the agency and at airports around the country.
More than 500 employees have quit, a department spokeswoman said last week, with wait times in security lines stretching for hours at some airports. She added that on Friday, more than 3,560 employees, over 12 percent of the agency’s work force, called in sick.
Mr. Homan contended on CNN that wait times had decreased since ICE agents arrived, doing identification checks and “plugging the security holes.” But their exact role has been unclear. The head of a union that represents T.S.A. officers said last week that ICE agents were “just getting in the way.”
Critics say ICE personnel at some airports are not carrying out tasks that would alleviate the burden of T.S.A. agents but rather patrolling halls or stationing themselves at checkpoints.
The standoff in Congress over funding the Homeland Security Department deepened on Friday, as House Republicans rejected a bipartisan deal and pushed instead to pass their own plan. They derided a Senate plan that would have funded most of the department but excluded money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, two agencies largely responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown that have continued to operate under previously approved funds….
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