The union representing Transportation Security Administration officers has a message for President Donald Trump: Thanks, but no thanks.

On Monday morning, the president dispatched Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to several airports to supposedly alleviate long security lines created by the partial government shutdown. But union representatives for TSA officers say the president’s plan is unhelpful at best and could actually make things more dangerous.

“Our guys are going to be pissed,” said Joe Shuker, a regional vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA officers.

National airports are in chaos thanks to a partial government shutdown. If you believe in reporting that holds power to account and explains what these changes mean for everyday people, we need your support. Join our membership program and protect the free press.

Shuker told HuffPost he received a text message Monday morning about ICE officers showing up at Philadelphia International Airport, one of 14 locations where the administration planned to send them. He wasn’t sure exactly what the ICE officers would be doing, but he knows they aren’t trained to do what TSA officers do: spot airport-specific security threats such as homemade bombs inside luggage and fake passports.

“There’s no way it helps,” he said of the ICE officers’ new assignment.

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said Sunday the administration would start by deploying officers to the largest airports with the longest wait times, but added they wouldn’t be screening baggage. Homan wasn’t sure what ICE officers would be doing, either, saying he was “working on the plan now of execution.”

“Certainly a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit and make sure people don’t go through those exits,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines.”

But a lot of airports don’t even have exits manned by TSA, Shuker noted. And when they do, guarding an exit is typically one of the least stressful duties in their rotation, and one of the few that lets a TSA agent sit for the duration.

Shuker also worries about the spectacle of having perhaps the most hated federal agency on the ground in crowded airports ― drawing news crews and stirring fears among the immigrant service workers, perhaps prompting even more sick callouts.

“Our guys don’t need more distractions,” he said.

Several large airports have seen brutally long security lines as an unusual number of TSA officers call out sick. They haven’t been paid in weeks due to the partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14, leaving much of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA, unfunded.

TSA officers are set to miss their next paycheck this Friday. As HuffPost reported last week, hundreds have resigned and many more are contemplating taking other jobs rather than face the prospect of even more shutdowns in the future. “At some point, everybody is just going to run out of money,” one agent said.

“Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one,” Everett Kelley, AFGE’s president, said in a statement.

“Our members at TSA have been showing up every day, without a paycheck, because they believe in the mission of keeping the flying public safe. They deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be,” Kelley said.

Democrats have insisted that any funding deal include some basic accountability measures for ICE operations, such as removing officers’ masks and implementing stronger use-of-force standards. Trump has resisted any compromise and, according to Punchbowl News, shot down a GOP-backed deal to fund all of DHS with the exception of ICE. Such a proposal could have gotten TSA officers paid and security lines back to normal while leaving Congress to hash out the ICE issues later.

Sending ICE officers into airports would do nothing to expedite a deal ― and on the off chance their presence actually helps shorten lines, it could only prolong the stalemate in Congress. Shuker said Trump signing a deal to fund TSA paychecks was the only solution.

“The president is sending in ICE and paying them to do our officers’ jobs – paying them more than us, actually,” he said. “If they paid TSA, they wouldn’t need ICE to assist. There wouldn’t be lines. There wouldn’t be callouts.”

By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.