White House border czar Tom Homan said ICE agents will be at airports nationwide helping with security on Monday. Homan said details of the plan were still being finalized, so it’s not clear where the ICE agents will be deployed. However, travelers won’t see them in security lines; Homan said they will help in roles that do not require training. “Certainly, highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit make sure you people don’t go through the exit, enter the airport through the exit, and stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines, so wherever we can provide extra security,” Homan said. The announcement comes as TSA employees have been working without a paycheck for more than a month. It also raised some questions amongst travelers and leaders in the Bay Area. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who was in the Bay Area Sunday, was among those concerned. “To put them in the airport, and even this morning his head guy said ‘We’re always doing immigration,’ so hopefully, they don’t turn the airport into a place where people fear to go because they may be threatened by ICE. This is wrong,” she said. The National President of the American Federation of Government employees issued a statement saying, in part: “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.” “I’m struggling to figure out how ICE can assist TSA, it takes at least one year to train a TSA officer, they’re not going to be hopping on the x-rays to prevent terrorist threats,” Assistant Chief of AFGE Local 1260 at the Oakland Airport Joseph Cerletti said. The Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport said it has not been advised of any proposed operational changes at this time. Homan said he believes the focus would be at large airports that have seen the longest wait times. Some travelers also voiced their opinions. “TSA is where the funds need to be made and anything they can do to help out I think that would be really beneficial for them,” Mary said. “Putting ICE in there just, to me, just elevates tensions unnecessarily people may be afraid to fly because they think they’re going to be seized or detained,” Kirk said. ...read more read less