As a wife and mom, I often organize travel plans. I like this role—making sure my family has the right flights, packing the diaper bag, getting suitcases organized, and if I’m really on top of my game, ensuring there’s an extra dozen eggs in the fridge for when we get back and need to make a quick meal before resuming our busy week. Vacations are fun—once you get there.
There’s one thing that has the potential to derail the whole trip though: airport security lines.
Airport security lines are managed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which was created after 9/11 with a singular mandate: prevent dangerous people and prohibited items from boarding commercial aircraft. Managing over 2.5 million passengers daily at peak periods, the workload is immense.
For the past few weeks, TSA has gone unfunded. The agents are working without pay, which no one should have to do, because liberal members of Congress have used restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a bargaining chip, blocking funding in this manner.
And yet, the very agency being used as a bargaining chip by liberals in Congress is the one helping make sure that Americans all over the country are able to make their flights on time.
While this congressional standoff is occurring, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been deployed to assist in airport operations, filling the gaps as TSA agents are starting to stay home.This is welcome news to many travelers. I’ve only missed one flight in my life, and it’s not a situation I would like to repeat, especially when traveling with a family. Any agency assisting in the avoidance of the logistical nightmare that comes with missing a flight is a gift to the everyday American traveler.
It seems there is a lot of gratitude for the extra support. Interviews at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, which is known for being the busiest airport in the world, show that Americans just want to make their flights on time, and if that means ICE helps out, they’re perfectly fine with it.
But there are still some online agitators, of course. While ICE is literally mitigating one of the most severe staffing shortages at airports in the past decades, they’re being attacked online. There is one video of an illegal immigrant with deportation orders being detained by ICE at airports, raising fury from keyboard warriors—but lost in the conversation is the fact that ICE is simply doing its job in deporting illegal immigrants, and on top of that, many tasks ICE is actually doing at the airport are not at all related to deportations, but rather ensuring Americans are able to travel during the TSA agent shortage.
In reality, this partnership between TSA and ICE is a quiet but vital collaboration. Without it, your family trips may not happen. Your spring breaks and Easter holidays could be grounded. We owe ICE a huge thank-you, because in the face of targeted harassment and demonization they are showing up for the American people, not just securing our borders but supporting transportation infrastructure where it is most needed.