ICE at Airports Casts a Chill Over Our Freedoms

Across the country, wait times at airport security checkpoints are stretching into hours far beyond the norm. People are arriving six, seven, eight hours early and still missing flights as many TSA agents refuse to show up to work after weeks without pay — their salaries having been weaponized in partisan political battles on Capitol Hill.

The Trump administration has seized this moment as an excuse to deploy ICE agents at major airports, introducing new layers of uncertainty and volatility, particularly for domestic travel. People have begun posting their own experiences and observations to social media, deepening confusion and speculation about what these ICE agents are supposed to be doing.

As false reports swirl about where ICE is and isn’t — stoking confusion and fear for travelers — here’s what we know:

ICE isn’t being deployed “to help TSA” 

Between 100 and 150 ICE agents arrived at airports around the country. The official justification from the Trump administration, repeated uncritically by a range of media outlets, is that this deployment is necessary because TSA’s anemic presence at airports — resulting from a partial government shutdown — is creating ever-longer security lines and beleaguering traveler experiences.

ICE’s presence is not suddenly speeding up security lines for travelers — because the Trump administration is not actually deploying ICE agents to conduct routine screenings. Instead, reports from airports where ICE agents have been deployed show these agents standing to the side as lines continue to grow. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have reported that Trump intervened in negotiations to mitigate the crisis by funding the TSA — demanding instead that TSA funding be tied to a broader DHS funding package as well as to the so-called “SAVE America Act.” That legislation is a dangerous collection of unprecedented voter ID requirements that also includes discriminatory measures targeting transgender Americans.

If you’re Brown or Black or not a U.S. citizen, ICE’s presence casts an added chill over considerations about whether to fly at all.

We’ve seen this playbook before: boosting the military to chill freedom

Normalizing the police state has been one of the most visible hallmarks of the Trump administration, harkening back to surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests, post-9/11 targeting of Muslims and even Civil Rights Movement operations like COINTELPRO in which the FBI engaged in sophisticated surveillance operations to crack down on “dissent.”

Today, images and videos flood social media showing federal law enforcement’s brutal treatment of people, particularly protesters and the press. This treatment is not happenstance but a strategic move to normalize military presence and violence. The Department of Defense won’t deny plans to activate the National Guard in all 50 states and “quell unrest” ahead of the 2026 midterms. Trump influencer Steve Bannon has said that ICE deployments at airports are an opportunity — a “test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” This is, in part, an effort to erode the concept and practice of free and fair elections.

An increased military presence — which Trump called for in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and elsewhere — has ushered in aggressive surveillance of protest gatherings, ICE’s disappearances of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike, and a deeply chilling environment where people must weigh the potential consequences of exercising their basic First Amendment right to assemble. The government has targeted immigrant reporters, including Mario Guevara and Estefany Rodríguez, for their coverage of government officials. It even deported Guevara for his work as a journalist.

We must mobilize to stop the growing surveillance state

While ICE agents fan out to airports, the Trump administration is rapidly expanding other branches of its surveillance apparatus. Border Patrol is buying access to real-time phone location data through online advertising networks. Federal agencies are partnering with firms like Flock, Palantir, Clearview AI and other surveillance-friendly companies that are blanketing our neighborhoods in cameras, gathering our data, monitoring our locations and selling the most sensitive personal information to the highest bidders.

Meanwhile, the White House is trying to reauthorize a controversial government surveillance authority without critical, broadly supported reforms to protect against well-documented abuses. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has previously enabled agencies like the NSA and FBI to conduct millions of warrantless “backdoor” searches into the calls, texts and emails of people in the United States, including those of journalists, protesters and members of Congress. Within the Trump administration, Stephen Miller is a “leading advocate” for reauthorizing Section 702 without reform, seeing it as “critical to a variety of homeland security missions.”

The risks of giving Miller what he wants are terrifying: reauthorizing government surveillance powers that are ripe for abuse as the Trump administration broadcasts its intent to criminalize those who dissent against or displease the president in any way. People across the country and on both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly support reforms to Section 702, just as they overwhelmingly support restrictions on law enforcement’s ability to tap into commercial data for the purpose of conducting mass surveillance. Congress must act on our behalf. It’s up to each of us to let our elected representatives and senators know that a straight 702 reauthorization is unacceptable, as a vote on these prying powers is expected in April 2026.

The inescapable presence of ICE agents in airports is just one visual indicator that life as many once knew it isn’t the same. This doesn’t have to be the new normal. We must stand up for our civil and constitutional rights – above the authoritarian desires of the Trump administration.