Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived Monday morning at the security area with long lines at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport(LMM) in Carolina, Puerto Rico.
Images released by the agency itself showed federal officers identified with different branches within ICE.
Some wore insignia from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). There were also agents with the initials “ERO,” referring to Enforcement and Removal Operations, the unit responsible for processing deportations of individuals without defined immigration status.
The agents were seen in the passenger lines heading to be screened by personnel from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) before boarding planes.
The long lines have been caused by a reduction in TSA agents, who have gone unpaid for a month due to the partial federal government shutdown, triggered by a deadlock in Congress over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which affects those employees.
The budget dispute has not affected ICE, since its funding had already been allocated.
However, the dozen agents seen at the airport limited themselves to interacting with and guiding passengers, so it was not clear how they would alleviate the shortage of TSA officers that has caused long lines at airports.
Jorge Hernández, president of Aerostar Airports Holdings—the company that operates the airport in Isla Verde— acknowledged the problems caused by the partial federal shutdown, now in its 37th day. He noted that long lines were reported over the weekend due to a combination of high passenger volume and TSA employee absenteeism.
The executive said TSA is expected to implement mitigation measures Monday, including reassigning administrative staff, he said in a radio interview.
Hernández indicated that ICE and TSA would coordinate what roles immigration agents might perform.
“What we’ve seen from ICE agents is that they are at different posts, carrying out monitoring or surveillance functions, and I understand coordination with agencies—in this case TSA—must be taking place to determine what other functions, if any, they will assume,” Hernández said on Radio Isla.
He specified that on Sunday, when about 23,000 passengers departed San Juan, only “less than 50% of processing capacity” was available.
“A number of operational contingency protocols were activated, such as installing tents—we set up more than 22,000 square feet of tents to protect passengers. Barriers were brought in to create lines, a structure within what could have been a chaotic process with somewhat long lines, so that passengers could have, within our operating limitations, a somewhat better process and experience,” Hernández said.
This Monday, about 20,000 passengers are expected to depart from Luis Muñoz Marín Airport. In light of this, he urged travelers to arrive about four hours in advance.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sunday that agents would supposedly help by checking identification documents and monitoring access points where TSA personnel are usually stationed, allowing those officers to focus on assisting travelers in lines.
“I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because we are not trained for that,” said White House immigration czar Tom Homan, as reported by The Associated Press.
Homan pledged to have “a plan by the end of the day (Sunday), indicating where we will send them: which airports we will start with and where we will deploy them.”
But Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees—which represents more than 50,000 TSA employees—condemned Trump’s plan, stating in a release that ICE agents are neither trained nor certified in aviation security.
“Our TSA members have been working every day, without pay, because they believe in the mission of keeping passengers safe,” Kelley said Sunday. “They deserve to be paid, not replaced by armed agents without training who have demonstrated how dangerous they can be.”
