Trump Sending ICE Officers To Help TSA Is A Dumb Idea | EUROtoday

The union representing Transportation Security Administration officers has a message for President Donald Trump: Thanks, however no thanks.

On Monday morning, the president dispatched Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to a number of airports to supposedly alleviate lengthy safety strains created by the partial authorities shutdown. But union representatives for TSA officers say the president’s plan is unhelpful at greatest and will really make issues extra harmful.

“Our guys are going to be pissed,” mentioned Joe Shuker, a regional vp for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA officers.

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Shuker instructed HuffPost he acquired a textual content message Monday morning about ICE officers displaying up at Philadelphia International Airport, considered one of 14 places the place the administration deliberate to ship them. He wasn’t positive precisely what the ICE officers could be doing, however he is aware of they aren’t skilled to do what TSA officers do: spot airport-specific safety threats resembling selfmade bombs inside baggage and faux passports.

“There’s no way it helps,” he mentioned of the ICE officers’ new project.

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, mentioned Sunday the administration would begin by deploying officers to the biggest airports with the longest wait occasions, however added they wouldn’t be screening baggage. Homan wasn’t positive what ICE officers could be doing, both, saying he was “working on the plan now of execution.”

“Certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit and make sure people don’t go through those exits,” Homan mentioned on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines.”

But a whole lot of airports don’t even have exits manned by TSA, Shuker famous. And once they do, guarding an exit is often one of many least tense duties of their rotation, and one of many few that lets a TSA agent sit for the length.

Shuker additionally worries concerning the spectacle of getting maybe probably the most hated federal company on the bottom in crowded airports ― drawing information crews and stirring fears among the many immigrant service employees, maybe prompting much more sick callouts.

“Our guys don’t need more distractions,” he mentioned.

Several massive airports have seen brutally lengthy safety strains as an uncommon variety of TSA officers name out sick. They haven’t been paid in weeks as a result of partial authorities shutdown that started Feb. 14, leaving a lot of the Department of Homeland Security, which incorporates TSA, unfunded.

TSA officers are set to overlook their subsequent paycheck this Friday. As HuffPost reported final week, a whole lot have resigned and plenty of extra are considering taking different jobs fairly than face the prospect of much more shutdowns sooner or later. “At some point, everybody is just going to run out of money,” one agent mentioned.

“Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one,” Everett Kelley, AFGE’s president, mentioned in an announcement.

“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,” Kelley mentioned.

Democrats have insisted that any funding deal embrace some primary accountability measures for ICE operations, resembling eradicating officers’ masks and implementing stronger use-of-force requirements. Trump has resisted any compromise and, in response to Punchbowl Newsshot down a GOP-backed deal to fund all of DHS apart from ICE. Such a proposal may have gotten TSA officers paid and safety strains again to regular whereas leaving Congress to hash out the ICE points later.

Sending ICE officers into airports would do nothing to expedite a deal ― and on the off likelihood their presence really helps shorten strains, it may solely delay the stalemate in Congress. Shuker mentioned Trump signing a deal to fund TSA paychecks was the one resolution.

“The president is sending in ICE and paying them to do our officers’ jobs – paying them more than us, actually,” he mentioned. “If they paid TSA, they wouldn’t need ICE to assist. There wouldn’t be lines. There wouldn’t be callouts.”