Will ICE still affect U.S. airport security waits?

ICE’s role at airports and what it means

A border official said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity may remain at U.S. airports even after TSA pay resumes. The key point: wait times decreased after TSA pay issues were addressed, but ICE agents would continue identification checks intended to “plug the security holes.”

In the same discussion, a border czar argued that the presence of ICE at airports—doing identification checks—had been associated with fewer security problems overall, even though ICE officers were part of the security process.

Why travelers should care

For passenger planning, this creates a more nuanced expectation than “all delays will disappear.” Even with TSA checkpoint lines improving, there can still be additional screening or document checks elsewhere in the airport flow depending on the airport, the flight, and the passenger’s route.

A practical way to plan around this is to treat security and border clearance as two separate potential bottlenecks:

• TSA lines at the checkpoint may improve as staffing stabilizes.
• ICE/identity checks could add time in immigration-related areas.

Planning advice

• If you’re connecting within the U.S., build extra buffer for any non-TSA processing after you clear the checkpoint.
• If you’re arriving from an international flight, expect possible variability in how identity checks are sequenced.

Details like how long ICE-related checks add at specific airports weren’t provided in the update, so the safest approach is to keep a wider arrival margin until you confirm local flow patterns for your exact airport and travel date.