Federal immigration agents arrived at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Hobby Airport Monday morning as TSA security wait times reached 4...
A federal immigration agent stands amid air travelers to assist with security across the lines of people waiting to progress through the TSA checkpoint in Terminal C at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Houston.
A cluster of ICE officers met a Houston Airport System staffer at baggage claim in Bush Airport’s Terminal A, who appeared to direct them toward their assignments shortly after 8:45 a.m. “Monitor the line, maybe spread out, maybe half upstairs,” the airport staffer said as she spoke to a crowd of agents around her before the group disbanded.At least three ICE agents stood alongside the winding TSA line on the top floor of the busy terminal, close to where lines fed into the final security checkpoint entry. Meanwhile, waits at Hobby Airport hovered around 10 minutes throughout the morning.Houston airport officials said in a recent update that ICE agents would be at Bush and Hobby airports to support TSA operations as part of the federal response to the ongoing government shutdown, which has affected TSA staffing. The Department of Homeland Security, which houses TSA, has been without funding for more than a month while Congress is deadlocked over immigration enforcement policy. Democrats have refused to fund the department without guaranteed reforms to immigration enforcement. Federal officials and Republicans have blamed Democrats for the TSA worker shortage at airports. Hundreds of TSA officers have quit, unable to afford basic expenses like food, rent, gas and child care, Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis said.Erika Lawson, 61, a passenger waiting at Hobby, said she didn’t like seeing the ICE agents coming through the airport.“I don’t feel they have a place here, and I’m very curious as to why they’re showing their face here in the airport and yet on the street they’re covering their face,” she said. Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA agents, bashed the plans for ICE to respond to U.S. airports. He said ICE agents lack the training and certification that would teach them how to identify explosives, weapons and other threats at security checkpoints. “Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap,” Kelley said in a release issued Sunday. “It creates one.”Joanna Kuebler, the chief of programs at the national immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice, said sending ICE agents to airports was “dangerous, unnecessary and absurd.” “Deploying ICE agents to airports instead of agreeing to the popular set of reforms on the table – or funding TSA and the rest of DHS while immigration enforcement negotiations continue – is another example of the Trump team’s fundamentally misplaced priorities,” Kuebler said in a release issued Monday. “It’s also another self-inflicted blunder by an administration that seems more interested in stoking Democratic outrage than listening to the American people, solving problems, or governing in a serious fashion.”At Terminal E in Bush Airport, wait times at security checkpoints reached four hours on Monday. They urged travelers to plan accordingly. Terminal A North, Terminal C and Terminal D were closed Monday morning, according to the airport’s website. Travelers were waiting 2.5 hours for standard security screening at Terminal A South, with lines spilling past the lower baggage claim level and descending one floor lower along the tracks of the inter-terminal subway. Terminal E reached a 3-hour wait time.TSA PreCheck was closed in Terminal A North, Terminal C North and Terminal E, as of 10:30 a.m., and CLEAR lines remained closed. TSA PreCheck travelers cruised through security in about 15 minutes during the hours-long wait for standard screening at Terminal A, but shortly after 7 a.m., the PreCheck line had closed, according to Houston Airports. Terminal C was initially open but closed as of 9:15 a.m. Its TSA PreCheck line lasted for about 30 minutes, according to the airport system. The TSA backlog, meanwhile, seemed nonexistent at Hobby Airport, where lines lasted fewer than 15 minutes, according to Houston Airports. “Because of the Democrat shutdown, President Trump is using every tool available to help American travelers who are facing hours-long lines at airports across the country—especially during this spring break and holiday season that is very important for many American families,” Bis said in a statement.Saturday’s TSA worker callout rate nationwide was the highest since the shutdown began, and the rates at Hobby and Bush airportsthat day, according to data from the federal agency. On Saturday, more than 47% of TSA officers at Hobby Airport called out of work, followed by more than 42% at Bush Airport, according to TSA. TSA PreCheck shut down in Terminal C by the time Houston resident Lacy Jester had made it through the expedited line Monday morning. After a trek to Terminal A, she had roughly an hour and a half until her Air Canada flight took off for her work trip destination. “Never, never in my life have I seen anything like this — not the lines, not all the way down the streets, not out in the terminals, the train station,” Jester said. “Never. Never in my life.” TSA officers have now gone without pay three times in nearly six months, according to DHS. A record-long government shutdownCynthia Ruffin missed her Monday morning flight to New York because of the winding lines at Bush Airport. She was in town for her niece’s birthday, but said her travel was a “horrible decision” as she moved past the baggage claim area in Terminal A standard screening line. “I’m going to miss work, and I shouldn’t have to miss work because I’m taking a trip with my hard-earned money,” Ruffin said.
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