A monthlong government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement the opportunity to improve its image with the public after two fatal shootings and deportation methods led to significant voter disapproval.
ICE officers, tasked with helping to ease wait times and long lines at airports across the United States, have been filmed interacting with travelers, assisting with their luggage tags or children, giving the agency a much-needed public relations boost ahead of a critical midterm election cycle where the GOP trifecta will receive a temperature check at the ballot boxes.
An ICE officer was credited with saving a toddler’s life at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York last week after the 1-year-old child became unresponsive and was unable to breathe, per DHS. The officer performed the Heimlich maneuver, with the child beginning to breathe a few seconds later, and was later determined well enough to fly.
“The ICE agent sprang into action and saved this one-year-old child’s life. If our agent had not been there and stepped up, this would have been a tragic outcome,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “Despite the endless smears and lies told about them by sanctuary politicians and the media, our ICE officers show up every day to protect the Homeland and their fellow Americans.”
Winding lines at several airports have become the most public sign of how the partial government shutdown is affecting everyday people, with wait times exceeding several hours as a wave of Transportation Security Administration employees continue to call out.
The ICE officer’s heroics at JFK was one of several moments caught on camera showing ICE working in good faith with travelers as they seek to alleviate issues from the shutdown. The absence of TSA workers prompted President Donald Trump to call “our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.”
In several videos caught by journalists or influencers, ICE officers were seen holding travelers’ spots in line so they could use the bathroom as they waited in a long line to go through security.
At Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, unmasked officers handed out bottles of water to travelers who were waiting for over four hours in line. A few also handed out lollipops to children.
Officers were spotted bonding and chatting with travelers, with one officer shaking hands with people as they snaked through the line.
The two shootings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were the tip of the iceberg for public opinion of ICE, following months of the agency carrying out the Trump administration’s immigration policies that led to scrutiny of families with young children being separated and U.S. citizens being detained or deported.
A poll in February found two-thirds of Americans believe ICE had gone too far in the administration’s crackdown on immigration, with a majority saying ICE is making Americans less safe.
The shutdown began in mid-February, leaving TSA employees without paychecks for several weeks, contributing to the growing number of workers calling off. Trump announced last week that TSA workers would start receiving pay via an executive order, with border czar Tom Homan saying the paychecks will arrive as soon as Monday.
Homan said on Sunday that ICE officers will remain at airports, for now, as TSA officers start to get paid.
“We’re going to continue an ICE presence there, and until the airports feel like they’re in 100%, you know, in a posture where they can do normal operations,” Homan said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “So if less TSA agents come back, that means we’ll keep more ICE agents there.”
Despite the good press surrounding ICE officers at airports, people were wary about their presence after a viral video showed plainclothes federal agents forcibly arresting a Guatemalan woman, Angelina Lopez-Jimenez, at the San Francisco International Airport.
DHS confirmed the arrest, stating the family had “an outstanding final order of removal since 2019.”
“While being escorted to the international terminal for processing, Lopez-Jimenez attempted to flee and resisted law enforcement officers,” a DHS spokesperson wrote. “ICE is working as quickly as possible to repatriate the family unit to their home country of Guatemala.”
DHS also noted it was one day before Trump’s announcement that ICE would be deployed to over a dozen airports in the U.S. However, Democrats such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who represents San Francisco, quickly jumped on the video as a sign of Trump’s “inhumane immigration enforcement.”
Some strategists believe that ICE officers at airports will ultimately not affect public opinion one way or the other on the agency’s immigration tactics.
“People associate airports with TSA, and I doubt that changes much when we’re past this” shutdown,” Republican strategist Doug Heye said.
Republican strategist John Feehery said ICE being at the airports will only serve as a “temporary patch” to voters’ concerns about airports and travel time, arguing the “best solution would be to pass the Homeland Security spending deal.”
Congress is no closer to finding a funding compromise for DHS as the shutdown enters its seventh week. The House rejected a bipartisan deal from the Senate that funded all of DHS except its immigration enforcement agencies. Conservatives and GOP leadership revolted over this plan, which was passed early Friday morning by a small group of senators.
TRUMP CRITIC AND FORMER REP. MARK SANFORD LAUNCHES COMEBACK BID FOR HOUSE
This places the burden of ending the shutdown back on the shoulders of the Senate, which faces an uphill battle to pass any compromise due to the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Trump and House conservatives have called on Senate GOP leadership to abolish the filibuster, but strategists and many senators have said that could open a can of worms.
“It’s a short-term solution that causes long-term problems,” Heye said, “which could come to haunt Republicans sooner than they think.”
