Trump "Paper Clip" Fix: ICE Agents At Airports Doing Nothing
If there's any Trump governing spectacle more absurd than long, shuffling lines of citizens surrendering phones, belts, and carry-ons to a rubber bin, it's the ignorant belief it's improved with ICE agents. Thus, Trump’s latest rotting brainstorm: He's deployed ICE to airports to somehow shorten monstrous TSA queues. Trump said it was his idea, and as simple and important as “the invention of the paper clip.” Seriously. He said that.
Trump’s “paper clip” is so poorly conceived one's tempted to admire it as a grotesque work of art. The problem is a shortage of trained security personnel. The remedy isn't to import federal agents whose training's elsewhere entirely and have them loiter in terminals like decorative office plants. Airport security isn't posturing. It requires specific training, coordination, and experience, things ICE agents, by design, don’t have.
Even the largest federal workers’ union warned using “untrained, armed” personnel instead of TSA officers could make things worse. So what exactly are taxpayers getting? At best, an expensive illusion of action. At worst, a misallocation of federal resources during a crisis created by the Trump administration itself.