ICE Agents Are Coming to Airports, but Which Airports Are They Coming To?
There's a list of 13 airports where agents have been deployed.
Published March 23 2026, 10:17 a.m. ET
Flying is a chaotic experience, and that's true even when TSA officers are showing up to work. Now, some airports are dealing with longer lines than usual because of a delayed shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Because of that shutdown, the Trump administration has announced that ICE agents will be deployed to airports across the country to help with security.
The news that ICE would now be at airports has naturally made some people hesitant to fly or even enter an airport. Here's what we know about which airports they'll be at.
Which airports will have ICE agents?
Although immigration czar Tom Homan confirmed that ICE would be deployed to airports across the country, he said on March 22 that he was still working on a plan, and was not clear about which airports agents would be deployed to. During an interview with CNN's State of the Union, Homan said that he believed ICE agents would be deployed to the nation's biggest airports, which are also where security lines are worst.
Homan also said that agents would be covering security points, but would not be involved in checking bags or other duties that TSA officers typically perform.
“You know, certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit. Make sure people don’t go through those exits, enter an airport through the exits, and stuff like that, relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines,” he explained
CNN has now published a list of the 13 airports where ICE has been deployed:
Atlanta (ATL) Chicago (ORD) Cleveland (CLE) Houston (HOU) Ft. Myers (RSW) New Orleans (MSY) New York (JFK) New York-LaGuardia (LGA) Newark (EWR) Philadelphia (PHL) Phoenix (PHX) Pittsburgh (PIT) San Juan, PR (SJU)
As expected ICE agents will be at the largest airports across the country, and the ones that have experienced the most crowding.
Airports are suffering from an extended DHS shutdown.
The reason that ICE agents are needed at airports, at least according to the Trump administration, is because DHS has been partially shutd own since mid-February. This shutdown comes after Democrats refused to continue funding DHS as it was being deployed to cities across the country and coming into conflict with the communities that lived in those places.
Homan, meanwhile, has said that ICE plans to continue its normal operations at airports.
“Wherever we can provide extra security — I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because [they’re] not trained in that. There are certain parts of security that TSA is doing, that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs, help move those lines,” he explained
“We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time. So it’s not going to change. It’s not going to change,” he added. What that means about how airports will operate in the weeks ahead, we don't yet know, but we do know where ICE is, at least to begin with.