Clean-up on Aisle 5-D
- Mar 23
- 4 min read
As much as Trump and his MAGOP acolytes in the White House and Congress are swaggering how ICE is now filling in for TSA at airports, it's hard to see how this won't backfire. That's because the job requires a long process for training. It's a couple of weeks at the academy, but also 120 hours of formal instruction and several months of on-site training. And ICE agents have zero. So they'll look clueless...because they are. And it will all be very public.
Already there are news stories about ICE agents chatting at baggage claim (for some unknown reason, since getting your bags comes at the very end of the standing in line to get on your flight process) and meandering around airports.
I wrote about that yesterday morning on social media. And then later in the day came a story about Steve Bannon saying the quiet part out loud on his podcast: that sending ICE to airports is a test-run for them checking IDs of people standing in line to vote at the Mid-Terms.
Bannon called this a "5-D" chess move by Trump.
"Let's get ICE into the airports to help out, to the lines," Bannon said. "They can't work the machines. You know what to do? Just walk them down. 'Can we check your IDs? That's what's going to happen in the fall of '26 because, folks, we're tired of having an election stolen."
This indeed may be Trump's plan. In fairness, it also might be Steve Bannon's fevered fascist dream. Or his blustering to sound like he's inside and knows much more than he does. Or him wanting to terrify others. Because not only is there zero evidence of ICE even checking anyone's ID at any airport, but the point might just be that the Trump team thinks the visual of ICE "helping out" at airports (supposedly) will thrill the public and put great pressure on Democrats to settle the supplementary funding bill.
But if it turns out that this is actually the point (if), then it's even worse for how much this will backfire. This isn't "5-D" chess, this is bad tiddlywinks.
People at airports are upset at the interminably longlines, not because their IDs aren't being checked. To be standing in lines for hours, angry, uncomfortable, hungry, and seeing ICE agents doing absolutely nothing to help (as even Bannon acknowledges, "They can't work the machines") and only harassing people, asking for their identification -- which everyone will have to give anyway just to board the plane -- and asking where they're from, and can they prove they're citizens, and questioning their accents can only infuriate the public more. And this doesn't take into consideration actual foreign travelers who (of course) aren't citizens, so they won't be able to prove they are, and having a passport from their home country might be enough for untrained ICE agents since, for all they know, they plan to stay past their permitted time and sneak into the country. And if they take any of these people -- foreign or even citizens -- for questions, that might force the travelers to miss their flights, even with such long waits.
Besides which, there are around 95,000 polling places in the U.S., which Bannon suggests ICE might want to patrol. But the numbers are that low (compared to over 132,000 in 2020) because so many people vote by mail now and don't go out to vote. However, it turns out that the Supreme Court declares voting by mail illegal (I wouldn't think they will, but this is the Roberts Court, so I don't put anything past them until they rule), then the number off polling places ICE will have to cover will skyrocket to over 200,000 that existed in 2018 before people got used to voting by mail.
And none of this takes into consideration how much I think the American public will hate ICE checking for IDs and patrolling voter lines. I suspect that Americans will be so red-hot furious at such a "show us your papers" fascist action to hinder their right to vote that it will backfire even more and drive even greater numbers of people to the polls.
So, "5-D" chess?? Only if that's the grade school level.
For that matter, it doesn't even reach the level of tiddlywinks. It's more like Winky-Dink, the old children's TV show where kids put a transparent "magic screen" on the set and drew on it with "magic crayons", pretending to be impacting the action.
Because from all evidence, having ICE at airports doesn't appear to be about this year's Mid-Terms, and the idea of ICE patrolling airports and checking IDs of people standing in massive lines (who know they'll have to give their IDs to actually-trained TSA agents anyone) and questioning them -- or, almost as bad, even if ICE agents do absolutely nothing and just wander around, not helping and wasting taxpayers dollars, that's going to backfire all on its own. And even worse for Trump and the Bannons of the world, risks creating an annoyed, even angry public at seeing ICE hovering near long lines where they don't belong, while doing absolutely nothing, except being wasteful, overbearing, and empty. Where the feeling of security comes from all the people with you in line.
In soccer, this is known as an "own goal." An unforced error where you mistakenly score a goal against yourself.
Just another day in Trump World.
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