Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will deploy to airports on Monday to help ease security lines amid the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday.

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to deploy ICE agents to airports as the shutdown drags into its second month, creating headaches for travelers moving through hours-long Transportation Security Administration security lines.

Homan confirmed that ICE will be deployed on Monday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We will be at the airports tomorrow, helping TSA move those lines along,” Homan said, adding that ICE will assist in areas like guarding exit doors to relieve TSA agents for screening travelers. “We’re simply there to help TSA do their jobs in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise.”

Homan said the details of the plan are still under discussion, but will be decided by Monday morning when ICE agents deploy.

“We’ll have a plan by the end of today, what airports we’re starting with and where we’re sending them,” Homan said. “It’s a work in progress.”

The move to deploy ICE comes as the DHS shutdown, which began on Feb. 14, strains airport workers. Many TSA agents have either called out rather than work without pay or quit altogether. More than 400 TSA officers have left their jobs since the start of the shutdown, according to an NBC News report.

Democrats are demanding statutory changes to immigration enforcement practices in exchange for funding DHS after two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York slammed the plan to deploy ICE agents to airports.

“The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said on CNN.

Jeffries, however, indicated that Democrats do not plan to back down from their demands in exchange for funding DHS.

“It’s unfortunate that Republicans have decided that they would rather force TSA agents to work without pay, inconvenience millions of Americans all across the country and now potentially expose them to untrained ICE agents and create chaos at airports throughout the land rather than get ICE agents under control,” Jeffries said. “They need to be reined in, and our view is that they should not get another dime of taxpayer dollars until we have bold and dramatic and meaningful changes.”

The Democratic leader also suggested funding TSA and all other DHS subagencies, with the exception of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Democrats have tried to advance such a bill several times, but Republicans have stymied the legislation, fearing they would lose leverage to eventually fund ICE and CBP.

Some Republicans have warmed to the idea of splitting off ICE and CBP funding from the rest of DHS, which includes TSA, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who leads the Senate Commerce Committee, suggested the idea in an interview with The Hill on Saturday. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., also brought up the idea in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire.” Both Kennedy and Cruz said Republicans would try to then pass funding for ICE through the reconciliation process, which only requires 50 votes in the Senate.

“Let’s open up everything but ICE,” Kennedy said. “But, I can tell you what’s gonna happen next, the Republicans are going to put a reconciliation bill on the floor that only requires Republican votes to fund ICE.”

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Since the U.S. attack on Iran, congressional Democrats and opponents of President Donald Trump called the operation unconstitutional and vowed to rein-in the president. But another impeachment — which the president says he fears if Democrats retake the U.S. House — hasn’t seriously entered the conversation.

That may change post-midterms if the party wins the House and Republicans lose their grip on both chambers of Congress plus the White House. Trump knows he would be in Democratic crosshairs and has expressed fear of a third impeachment to congressional Republicans, telling them to they need to win in November.

“If you swing at him, you want to make sure that you don’t miss,” Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist who has worked on the Hill and for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, said in an interview.

House Democrats convened last week to hash out strategy for this year, meeting before the new Iran war — which Trump began without seeking congressional approval — gave another potential grounds to seek impeachment.

Impeachment tends to be unpopular with voters, and there is concern in some Democratic corners that past attempts to rein-in Trump have not resonated. He was impeached by the U.S. House in 2019 over allegations that he withheld military aid to Ukraine to exert political pressure and in 2021 over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2020 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Both times the Senate voted to acquit.

But if Democrats win back the House, there will likely be serious pressure to impeach Trump a third time. No other president has been impeached twice.

“We’re not afraid of impeachment or any other constitutional tool in our arsenal, but we have learned that impeachment is no panacea,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview before the operation in Iran. 

“It’s not a fetish with us, but it’s also not a taboo with us,” Raskin said. “If we think that this will be the most effective way to address some of the crises of the republic that have been unleashed by President Trump or particular members of his cabinet, then it will have to be considered.”

Given that any talk of impeachment is purely symbolic with Republicans in control of both the House and the Senate, Leopold said he did not expect to see any groundswell of impeachment talk in the short term.

“You’ve seen some come out at various points, using the ‘I word’ usually as sort of an attention seeking device,” Leopold said. “People mostly want to see Democrats fight back in a way that has real world impact. … Sometimes if you’re a football team, you want to hand the ball off and get first downs instead of trying to go for a Hail Mary every play.”

While the Iran attack didn’t bring a deluge of new impeachment calls, Democrats since Trump retook office last year have threatened to impeach Trump over his 2025 strikes on Iran, his ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro without congressional approval and for a grab bag of other alleged offenses. 

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who as recently as the Maduro ouster in January had said she was “reconsidering” her view that pursuing impeachment now was unrealistic, put the kibosh on any similar effort now.

“I don’t want to go there. I think that we’re focused on what is happening in Iran,” Waters said Tuesday as she left a Trump administration briefing on the Iran operation. “I think when we take control of the House we will consider that.”

“The morally bankrupt Trump administration has partnered with another morally bankrupt authoritarian to declare an unprovoked war on Iran, already killing scores of civilians,” candidate Kat Abughazaleh posted on BlueSky. “We need an immediate vote from Congress on a War Powers Resolution. Then articles of impeachment.”

Fellow candidates Evanston, Ill. Mayor Daniel K. Biss and state Sen. Laura Fine similarly called for Trump’s impeachment.

Before the Iran attack, Democratic leaders were weighing how to effectively keep Trump in check without drowning out other issues. Party leaders have discussed prioritizing an affordability message, the same topic Republicans want Trump to focus on for the election year.

When Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, brought a resolution to impeach Trump in December, just 140 Democrats voted against a motion to table the measure. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose leadership team opted not to drum up votes for the resolution, was one of 47 Democrats to vote “present,” not supporting or opposing the measure.

“What we tell our members and what we tell candidates who are running is we have to do all of the things,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said at the Democratic policy retreat last week. “We have to do oversight and accountability and we have to talk about the affordability agenda and how we’re going to make life better for people if we’re given the opportunity to lead and if we’re given the opportunity to govern.”

Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said at the retreat that some Democratic attempt to impeach is all but certain. The trouble, she said, would be determining on what grounds to impeach. Jeffries is “not going to just have a free for all,” she said.

“I think the difficulty would be narrowing down the high crimes and misdemeanors. Because I think there are high crimes and felonies,” Ross said. 

Congressional Democrats will force a vote on a war powers resolution relating to Iran next week, Democratic leadership announced Thursday, as President Donald Trump engages in a massive military buildup in the region. The resolution would limit Trump’s ability to conduct military action there.

Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have introduced a measure known as a war powers resolution that would compel the administration to seek congressional approval before engaging in any further activity in Iran. Congress has the sole authority to declare war under the U.S. Constitution, though that authority has been stretched in recent years by the executive branch.

“As soon as Congress reconvenes next week, we will compel a vote of the full House of Representatives on the bipartisan Khanna-Massie War Powers resolution,” the Democratic leaders led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

“The Iranian regime is brutal and destabilizing, seen most recently in the killing of thousands of protestors,” the statement read. “However, undertaking a war of choice in the Middle East, without a full understanding of all the attendant risks to our servicemembers and to escalation, is reckless.”

The war powers resolution would also need to be approved by the Senate if it is passed by the House. But passage from the House is far from a guaranteed outcome as bipartisan lawmakers have recently lined up against the resolution.

Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., released a statement last week opposing the measure, citing concerns about Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

“We respect and defend Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war. Oversight and debate are absolutely vital,” the pair wrote. “However, this resolution would restrict the flexibility needed to respond to real and evolving threats and risks, signaling weakness at a dangerous moment.”

Trump has overseen a massive military buildup in the Middle East and has threatened strikes against Iran. His administration is also negotiating with Tehran over the country’s nuclear program. The two countries held a third round of talks in Geneva on Thursday.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi in a post on X described the day’s negotiations as having made “significant progress.” He said that technical discussions will continue next week in Vienna and that the principals would reconvene “soon after consultation in the respective capitals.”

The president said during his State of the Union address Tuesday that he prefers to resolve the Iran situation diplomatically but did not take military force off the table.

“I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

The Truth Social account of President Donald Trump on Friday morning removed a racist image showing former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama portrayed as apes after outrage over the post.

The depiction of the Obamas, posted late Thursday from Trump’s official Truth Social account, was included in a video clip pushing a conspiracy theory about voting machines during the 2020 election.

The White House initially defended Trump’s post when asked for comment on Friday morning, but the sole Black Republican senator quickly called for Trump to remove the post.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement earlier Friday.

“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt’s reply included a link to a longer video posted Oct. 24 from a pro-Trump meme account on X.

Hours later, the post was deleted from Trump’s Truth Social account.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a White House staffer erroneously posted the video and that it since had been taken down.

In addition to showing the Obamas as apes, the full video shows other animals bearing the faces of prominent Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another Democrat mocked in the video, said on X: “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”

Trump is depicted in that video as a lion. The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens plays in the background.

The Obama Foundation did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Trump’s opponents may seek to make the post an issue for the midterm election in November, though it’s still nine months away.

Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress have expressed worries that they will not be able to retain their slim majorities in both the House and Senate in November’s election.

The NAACP, in a post on X, said: “Trump posting this video — especially during Black History Month— is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people. And we’ll remember that in November.”

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who is Black and a close ally of Trump’s, blasted the image.

“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott wrote in a post on X.

“The President should remove it,” Scott wrote.

Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who is considered at risk of losing his seat in the House of Representatives in November’s election, criticized Trump’s post, saying on X, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

Democratic elected officials quickly called on other Republicans to condemn the post.

“President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans,” Jeffries wrote on X. “They represent the best of this country. Donald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder.”

“Why are GOP leaders like John Thune continuing to stand by this sick individual? Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” Jeffries wrote, referring to the Senate majority leader.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., in a own post on X, said, “This kind of Jim Crow-style dehumanization is pathetic and a disgrace to the office.”