ICE is part of DHS – even if, for a while, ICE has separate funding from the last funding bill, eventually it will run out and they won’t be getting paid either. This is only a temporary “solution” at best… and ICE agents, already poorly trained for the job they’re supposed to do, are going to do so badly at TSA jobs that travel will be even more fucked up.
Makes sense, thanks for explaining it, but it still seems like a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.
I mean, what should Democrats do in your opinion? Make a deal then even if they don’t get what they want? Or continue to hold out and not give in under this intense pressure that Donald Trump is now threatening?
Obviously he’s being like a bully like he always is. He has this “do what I say or I will threaten you until you do what I say” mentality because he wants everyone to fall in the line under his orders. It is my belief that a deal should still not be reached and this time the Democrats should refuse to cave entirely instead of “we will give in if you give us what we were holding out for before this”. I mean, I assume there was something that they were holding out for… Which is why the shutdown was still going on.
Basically, go in and say “No deal now, whereas before we would have made a deal had we gotten…this… And you can take your threats and wipe your ass with them”.
Because as ice agents take over TSA agents job and TSA agents continue not to be paid and the airlines continue to get ramped up full of trouble, aggression, and hostility, eventually there’s going to be a breaking point with the public you would think no matter if a person was a Republican or a Democrat.
Democrats should continue to refuse to fund DHS without serious reform to ICE’s illegal behavior. This is an existential conflict for civil rights and due process in the US. If ICE can do what they’ve been doing to supposed illegal immigrants, they can do it to anyone and call them illegal immigrants, regardless of the facts… because due process is the only means by which the wrongly detained can legally challenge their detainment. The right to due process protects us all, not just migrants.
We agree then.
Something worries me this will probably make the Democrats crack under pressure, though.
In any case, if it still continues to go on, it’s going to be mighty interesting to see what comes in airport news in the next week. I am not going to envy anyone traveling via the air.
I came to say this.
The TSA employs 50,000 people.
ICE employs 20,000.
So this is going to dilute their ability to kidnap and murder civilians, make air travel visibly worse at a time when pric3s are.climbing and Trump is already hated by two-thirds of the country, and STILL leave the airports understaffed.
Please, Mr. President, don’t throw me into yonder briar patch.
Democrats actually held together:
Senate passes a bill such that TSA and most of the DHS are funded, with no funding for ICE and CBP (since Republicans still didn’t agree to significant reforms). Republicans no longer have any leverage (like “fund it or no paychecks for TSA agents”) on this. Republicans might be able to restore funding to ICE and CBP without Democrats via reconciliation, but that was always possible.
Well done to Senate Democrats for sticking together on this.
And now the House GOP has shot this down, extending the shutdown.
I hope they wear this. They now own ALL of the turmoil at airports. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
This is a Republican House led shit-show.
As if more proof was needed that there needs to be a complete blue wave to get Congress functional once more.
Politically, that’s awesome. Now Democrats are on the record voting for a unanimous bipartisan funding bill, that would pay TSA and the rest of DHS, while Republican in-fighting is stopping it from proceeding.
Apparently, Trump is now saying, just pay the TSA from the money in big ugly bill, so all this mess was for nothing.
Trump says a lot of things.
Trump says that his pens used to cost $100, but he struck a deal with the Sharpie company to supply them for only $5.
The Sharpie company denies any such request or communication at all. And the pens cost about $1.50
You’re too kind to our raging national anus.
“While discussing the Federal Reserve building, Trump interrupted the cabinet meeting by picking up the pen on his binder and talking about ditching $1,000 pens for $5 Sharpies.”
I’m sure someone is making $3.50 on the deal.
Defund ICE forever.
Detainees with no criminal charges were sometimes held in cramped jails for more than a week, violating Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidelines that limit such stays to three days.
In Orange County, home to Orlando, the county mayor and immigration lawyers said that federal authorities had been picking up jailed detainees and driving them not to immigrant detention centers, but around town for a few hours. Federal authorities would then rebook the detainees into the jail the same day, in order to restart the three-day clock, the mayor and lawyers said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/us/florida-immigration-desantis-republicans.html
And of course, the demographic who travels by air is, by and large, the demographic that most needs to be convinced of how bad Trump is.
My employer just issued us an option to register an emergency contact if we are arrested or detained on the job. Apparently, it’s a state law, but the timing is interesting.
TSA just got paid, at least once, so apparently all the airport chaos was for nothing, although it did manage to get a bunch of racist, fascist, lawless idiots in the airports.
What it did is begin the process of normalizing ICE at airports. It’s going to be like when TSA first started showing up except instead of random screenings, people will go into the airport knowing there’s a very real chance of a random beating. All those people that breathe a sigh of relief when they make it through security without being questioned for no reason will be even more relieved when they aren’t arrested for no reason.
As someone who hasn’t flown in years, has no plans of flying any time soon and who’s life is really not affected by what happens with passenger air travel, part of me hopes someone, somewhere uses their power to grind (passenger) air travel to a halt to get ICE out of the airports. For example, if an airline decided they’ll no longer operate out of airports with ICE or one of the Airport Worker’s unions goes on strike, something along those lines. Not saying it’ll happen, but it would be nice if it did.
And I’m surprised people haven’t made a bigger deal out of the fact that the ICE agents in airports aren’t wearing masks.
They don’t all wear masks. One day, while waiting for a train at a placid little suburban train station, i noticed a gaggle of ICE agents. They weren’t wearing masks, they were wearing clothes that loudly advertised they were ICE, and like the ones at airports, they just stood there and talked to each other, for all the time i was on the platform.
I took photos, in case anything happened later, but i never heard of anything. I think they were just standing there to make the public uncomfortable. “Show of force”.
This was about a year ago.