With no end in sight to the DHS shutdown, ICE agents are assisting the TSA at airports across the country. This, as TSA agents are quitting or not showing up to work, since they’re not getting paid during the ongoing stalemate over funding. Kevin Dolliole, the director of aviation at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, says ICE agents are helping with things like crowd control and directing passengers to open lines. But they cannot screen luggage.
“They can’t do that. They’re not trained for that. They could pick up functions at the checkpoint that are not screening functions,” Dolliole said.
Dolliole says the purpose is to free up TSA agents to do the functions that only they are trained to do, in order to eliminate the lines that have extended into the parking garage in recent days. And he says this morning, it seemed to have worked.
“Unlike yesterday, it’s already drawn up to being totally inside the building now, working its way through Level 1 and getting smaller as we move through the morning,” Dolliole explained.
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