Top TSA watchdog backs Trump’s ICE airport move as shutdown snarls travel

By Fox News · Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: A key lawmaker charged with oversight of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) believes President Donald Trump's new plan addressing the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown will reduce hours-long airport delays nationwide. "I think it will help and it'll speed up the process greatly," Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee on transportation, told Fox News Digital. "Right now, we're losing TSA agents not only due to sickness, but some of them are actually getting up, you know, basically saying, 'That's it, I've had enough. Every six months I've got to put up with this stuff.' And they say, ‘This is not for me.’ We need to stop this." Trump announced Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be deployed to airports across the country to help ease travel chaos brought on by the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, which is now in its 37th day. TRUMP SAYS ICE WILL DEPLOY TO AIRPORTS MONDAY TO ASSIST TSA AMID FUNDING STANDOFF "On Monday, ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job despite the fact that the Radical Left Democrats, who are only focused on protecting hard line criminals who have entered our Country illegally, are endangering the USA by holding back the money that was long ago agreed to with signed and sealed contracts, and all," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He followed it with another post Monday calling on ICE agents working at airports to do so without wearing face coverings. Masks have been a point of fierce contention in DHS funding talks, with Democrats demanding that they conduct immigration enforcement operations without them while Republicans insist they are critical to agents' safety. "I started out in the private sector. And in the private sector, the customer is always right. …The U.S. citizen is our customer, and so we can't allow them to go through these long waits beca…