As Columbus, Cincinnati airports wait for ICE, Cleveland receives help and Dayton could close

While Columbus and Cincinnati airport officials are waiting for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help their Transportation Security Administration workers, officials at the Cleveland airport are receiving federal help, and Dayton’s airport could be closed because it cannot handle the workload due to the government shutdown.

President Donald Trump responded to Congress not finding a compromise on funding the federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security by announcing that ICE agents will go to the airports all around the country to assist TSA workers, wih are currently not being paid because of the partial government shutdown.

“THEY WILL DO A FANTASTIC JOB. The great Tom Homan is in charge!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, Breann González Almos, a spokesperson for John Glenn Columbus International Airport, told The Columbus Dispatch that the Columbus Regional Airport Authority doesn’t know if ICE agents will be sent to the airport. Some travelers told the news source on March 22 that they generally didn’t have long waits when they arrived at different airports that morning or when they left Columbus.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport was another airport that didn’t receive ICE agents to help their TSA agents, who allegedly have been struggling to do their jobs, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

“President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted,” Lauren Bis, Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affair at DHS, told The Enquirer. “This will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimize air travel disruptions.”

On the other hand, the federal government sent some of the ICE agents to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, according to Cleveland.com.

“These personnel are supporting TSA operations in a non-screening role, including assisting with passenger flow and divesting,” the airport officials said in their statement, according to Cleveland.com. “They are not conducting identification checks or screening passengers.”

Meanwhile, Newsweek published a list of small airports across the United States that could be closed because they cannot handle the workload. Among them is James M. Cox Dayton International Airport in Dayton.

Ohio politicians in Washington, D.C., were, as usual, divided on the issue of government funding, with U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, the lone Democrat who sided with Republicans, going as far as wroting on X, “Sometimes the solution is so simple. Just fund TSA. Do not send ICE into airports. The votes are there to fund TSA immediately.”

Landsman previously noted that the DHS funding is “being held up by Democrats in the Senate.”

As expected, U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, recently criticized Democrats for allegedly being responsible for the partial shutdown.

Reps. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, opposed ICE’s presence at the airports.

“This is a disaster waiting to happen,” she wrote on X in response to the federal government sending ICE agents to the Cleveland airport. “ICE shouldn’t be at any airport in America. ICE agents aren’t trained to work airport security – it’s a different job in a different work environment. And as we’ve seen repeatedly with our own eyes, many of Trump’s new agents aren’t even trained to do their own job.”