Airline Service Getting Colder By the Minute

Update: Thank you, Steve in Manhattan, for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Everyone: Stay safe; Abolish ICE; Stop the Wars; and Defend Your Vote!

File under the "What Could Possibly Go Wrong" category of putting thugs in charge of public transportation (via Luke Garrett at NPR):

President Trump said he is sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports as some air travelers face longer security lines due to the partial government shutdown.

"On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job," Trump posted on social media Sunday.

The Trump administration has blamed Democrats for the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has entered its sixth week and paused paychecks for Transportation Security Administration workers.

"This pointless, reckless shutdown of our homeland security workforce has caused more than 400 TSA officers to quit and thousands to call out from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent," Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told NPR in an email.

What trump and his lackeys aren't mentioning is that the Democrats put a hold on DHS funding in order to curtail escalating violence and civil rights abuses by those very ICE agents. Of course, they can never be in the wrong, can they...

DHS did not respond to NPR's question of where ICE agents will be deployed.

But Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Sunday evening that agents would be at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to help with "line management and crowd control." In a statement, he said federal agents "indicated that this deployment is not intended to conduct immigration enforcement activities."

Which counters trump's own claim that the ICE agents will be there to detain any and all undocumented travelers (with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, because trump is still obsessed with punishing Somali from Minnesota, Ohio, Maine, and elsewhere).

Because of the shutdown, by the by, actual TSA agents aren't getting paid through emergency funding, but ICE agents are, which is going to make things very painful around the water cooler at the workplace this Monday...

The head of the union that represents TSA officers denounced the plan to send ICE to airports.

"ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security," Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement on Sunday.

He said TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats designed to evade detection at checkpoints.

"They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be," he added.

Word is already this weekend that check-in lines at airports are backed up, delayed by hours and getting worse. There's little evidence that bringing in ICE agents - untrained for crowd control, more likely to be abusive towards passengers already under stress - will free up the lines and improve departure times for people. There's also the risk that anyone "suspicious" in ICE's eyes - anyone with darker skin than a Duggar scion - is going to get harassed and attacked for no other reason than just standing there.

All of the bad governance spawning violence in our cities is now going to be working inside our airports.

What can possibly go wrong? (hint: everything)