Trump threatens to send federal immigration agents to airports amid DHS shutdown

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send ICE agents to airports around the U.S. amid an ongoing standoff between Senate Republicans and Democrats over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Trump said ICE agents’ work in airports would include “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country.”

His comments come one day after Democrats in the Senate voted down Republicans’ efforts to pass a bill to fund DHS, which has been partially shut down since mid-February.

The shutdown has led Transportation Security Administration officers who conduct security checks at U.S. airports to go unpaid, leading to callouts en masse and lengthy security lines at airports across the country.

ICE, another agency under DHS, is not affected by the ongoing shutdown, as that agency received $75 billion in additional funds from the “big, beautiful bill,” the president’s major legislative package that was passed and signed into law last year.

In February, Democrats vowed to shut down DHS until Republicans agreed to new checks on ICE agents such as requiring them to wear identification and banning them from wearing face coverings.

The move came after two Americans — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed by federal law enforcement in Minnesota in January during a major immigration crackdown in the state.

This week, bipartisan negotiators on Capitol Hill met with fresh energy to work to end the shutdown. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, met with some Senate lawmakers earlier this week.

One lawmaker, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters on Friday that Republicans offered Democrats a new proposal this week.

“We’ve offered body cams, more training, limiting arrests for sensitive areas like churches and hospitals and so forth, schools, it’s a long list,” Hoeven said. “I think the Democrats need to come back to us now and talk to us about what they’re willing to do.”

Also this week, senators on a key committee weighed the president’s nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to lead DHS. Earlier this month, Trump said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would step down at the end of March and that Mullin would be nominated as her replacement.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com