Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner threatened to arrest federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers deployed to Philadelphia International Airport, warning agents they could face handcuffs, a courtroom, and a jail cell if they carried out their duties on his turf.
“You commit crimes within the jurisdiction that is the city and county of Philadelphia, I prosecute you,” Krasner said at a press conference outside the airport. “No, I don’t take a phone call from the president saying ‘Let him go.’ No, the president cannot pardon you. I’ll say it again, the president cannot pardon you. And yes, I will put you in handcuffs, and I will put you in a courtroom, and if necessary I will put you in a jail cell.”
Krasner also invoked the death of an unarmed man in Minneapolis in his warning to federal agents. “If you decide to make the terrazzo floor of this airport anything like what you did in the streets of Minneapolis, which involved the criminal homicide of unarmed innocent people, we are not having that here,” he said. “To any agent who might think about doing it an illegal way, I’ll be seeing you in court, and you’re not gonna like it.”
ICE agents have been deployed to roughly a dozen airports across the country to help offset TSA staffing shortages during an ongoing partial government shutdown. The DHS shutdown, which began in mid-February, has claimed more than 450 TSA officer resignations. On Sunday alone, more than 3,450 TSA officers called out sick, representing nearly 12% of the workforce. At Houston’s George Bush International Airport, wait times hit four hours Tuesday.
TSA Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday that the ICE deployment has been a success. “The ICE agents that are there are doing non-specialized screening functions, it’s been incredibly helpful to alleviate the burden on our workforce and we’re getting positive feedback from passengers and our field leadership alike,” McNeill said.
