Tom Homan, the Trump administration border czar, said Sunday that although President Trump signed an order to pay Transportation Security Administration workers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will continue to assist “until the airports feel like they are 100%.”
“Look, we’re going to continue a nice presence there, and until the airports feel like they’re 100%, you know, in a posture where they can do no normal operations,” Homan said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Congress has yet to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for more than 40 days. Early Friday morning, the Senate passed a bill to fund DHS that did not include money for ICE and other immigration removal. The House rejected that bill and instead passed its own version, which would extend funding for the entire department, including ICE, for 60 days. The dueling bills leave the shutdown without an end in sight.
Mr. Trump announced Thursday that he would be redirecting funds to pay TSA agents, who have not gotten a paycheck in over a month since the shutdown began. But the TSA said last week that 500 agents had quit since the shutdown began.
“If less TSA agents come back, that means we’ll keep more ICE agents there,” Homan said Sunday. “The president has been clear. He wants to secure those airports, especially, as I said earlier, in an increased threat posture, we need to secure those airports. ICE is there to help our brothers and sisters in TSA. We’ll be there as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure.”
ICE and Customs and Border Protection both received an influx of funds from Mr. Trump’s 2025 One Big, Beautiful Bill, meaning they are both operating during the shutdown despite other parts of DHS being shut down. Secret Service personnel are also being paid during the shutdown.
Other agencies within DHS that have not been funded include FEMA, CISA and the U.S. Coast Guard, although active-duty Coast Guard members are currently being paid with discretionary funds.
While immigration removal operations have been criticized since the beginning of the Trump administration, ICE and CBP tactics have come under further scrutiny this year amid the crackdown in Minneapolis, where immigration officers from those agencies shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in two separate incidents in January.
Homan took over control of the Minneapolis operation in the wake of the shootings. In the weeks afterward, embattled DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, an internal rival of his, departed at the helm of the department earlier this month amid questions about ad contracts under her watch.
Former Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma was sworn in as her replacement last week.
Democrats have refused to pass any budget for DHS that does not include reforms for immigration enforcement. The Senate-passed deal did not include these reforms, but Democrats hailed it as a victory since it would not fund ICE and would instead allow for further negotiations.
Homan on Sunday rejected the Democrats’ demands, saying that “we already made those changes” and that Democrats are holding up any reforms, including body cameras for ICE agents.
“The bill they’re holding up right now actually gives $120 million to buy more cameras,” Homan said. “I’ve already talked to them. They want to, you know, talk about policy and legislative policy. Look, if they want to change the law, change the law. We’re enforcing laws they enacted.”
Homan also said that another one of the Democrats’ demands — for ICE to stop detaining undocumented immigrants in hospitals, houses of worship or schools — was not currently happening, although the Trump administration did announce a policy shift in Jan. 2025 to allow arrests at those locations.
“You can’t point to one instance when we actually went into a church and school because we try very hard to wait for people to leave places,” Homan said. “We wait for them. We arrest them in their home or arrest them in their community. We try very hard not to go into those sensitive locations because we know there’s an issue there.”
