Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is accusing President Donald Trump of using immigration enforcement to terrorize people rather than address airport security and public safety during the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding lapse.
According to Fox News, Frey used a Sunday appearance on MS NOWs The Weekend to attack the Presidents decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to airports as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffing thins under the shutdown. When he says that hes going to do security like no one has ever seen before, he doesnt actually mean that hes going to keep people secure, Frey claimed, framing the move as political theater rather than a legitimate security response.
He went on to argue that If the goal here was safety at airports, he could hire out more TSA agents that do an incredible job at keeping our airports safe, ignoring the basic reality that new federal hiring requires congressional approval and funding that Democrats have refused to provide without immigration concessions.
The mayors criticism came after the administration announced that ICE agents would be sent to airports nationwide to help manage long lines caused by staffing shortages. Frey insisted that if the President truly cared about public safety, If the goal was keeping our streets safe and our cities [safe], he would work with cities around hiring additional police officers and creating the kind of safety infrastructure that we need to keep people safe. But of course, we all know thats not the goal, he added, before escalating his rhetoric: The goal is to terrorize people. And for someone that states that they care so much about bringing the economy back causing a ton of fear in airports, preventing the kind of safe air travel that we need for commerce, is not a good mechanism to do it.
In reality, the President lacks unilateral authority to hire more TSA agents while the agency is unfunded, even as Democrats in Congress continue to tie DHS appropriations to demands for changes in immigration enforcement. By contrast, the President does have the legal authority to redeploy personnel from a separate agency such as ICE to supplement strained operations, though ICE officers do not receive the same specialized training as TSA screeners.
Freys assertions went unchallenged on air, with no correction offered regarding the limits of executive authority under a funding shutdown. Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Freys office and MS NOW for comment, but neither had responded at the time of publication.
The DHS shutdown reached its 37th day on Sunday, leaving thousands of TSA agents working without pay for more than a month as partisan gridlock in Washington persists. More than 400 TSA employees have resigned, and many others are calling in sick, producing hourslong lines at major airportsconditions that critics of the shutdown blame on Congresss refusal to fund border security and enforcement priorities that the administration has repeatedly said are essential to both national security and economic stability.
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