Governor of California Gavin Newsom slammed U.S. President Donald Trump for his plans to deploy ICE agents at airports. The governor’s comments come a day after the president threatened to deploy his agents from Monday due to a TSA staffing shortage amid the ongoing partial government shutdown.
Gavin Newsom reacts to ICE news
On Sunday, the official X (formerly Twitter) account for Gavin Newsom’s press office criticized Donald Trump.
The post read, “By sending ICE into airports, Trump is proving the problem in real time: ICE has become the president’s lawless, under-trained, personal police force, deployed to serve his agenda — not the law.”
This was in response to Trump’s Truth Social post, in which he addressed the shortage of TSA security agents at US airports.
Part of the Republican leader’s post read, “If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before!” He later added, “ I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!’”
On Sunday, border czar Thomas Homan confirmed to CNN that he’s working on plans to deploy ICE agents on Monday. He said that he’s working with the ICE director and the TSA administrator to execute the president’s orders. Homan also noted that the ICE agents have received “high levels of training” for such situations.
For context, there is a significant TSA staffing shortage across the United States due to the partial government shutdown. This has reportedly resulted in several agents working without full pay for weeks and long wait times for travelers at the airports. Since TSA is funded through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has not received fiscal year 2026 funding, payroll for its employees is halted (via CNN).
