CNN Reporter Raves Over Drop in Airport Wait Times Since Arrival of Trump’s ICE Agents: ‘I Almost Can’t Believe I’m Able to Say This!’

CNN senior national correspondent Ryan Young said he was shocked at how short the security line was at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday morning, one day after President Donald Trump deployed ICE agents to help TSA employees handle the lengthy wait times.

“Wolf, I almost can’t believe I’m able to say this, the times have dropped off tremendously this morning,” Young told anchor Wolf Blitzer. “People were waiting an hour in line, now that is not the case.”

He then chuckled as the CNN camera panned to show a few people waltzing through a breezy TSA line.

“If you look at the main checkpoint here, there seems like there’s less than a dozen people,” Young said.

Young said that Tuesday tends to be a slower day at Atlanta’s airport, but the “fall off” in traffic was still noticeable. He added the interactions between passengers and the ICE agents have been “pretty nice” because “they’re not wearing the mask.” 

Blitzer then asked Young what the ICE agents were doing exactly, and whether they were “getting involved in immigration-related questioning and other activities.”

Young said he hasn’t seen that or ICE agents doing much of what TSA employees normally do.

“What we’ve noticed is, as they’re walking through here, they’re not interacting with anybody. We’ve never even seen them take a license from anybody as well,” Young reported. “The one area of the job that we have seen them do is every now and then they’ll stand — like this gentleman is — right behind some of the TSA agents, but not even interacting with the public. So he’s standing there guarding, but not taking any sort of boarding pass or ID from anyone.”

Atlanta was one of 14 cities Trump sent ICE agents to on Monday to help with the airport chaos. Not all of them were moving as smoothly as Atlanta on Tuesday, though.

Fox News correspondent Brooke Taylor reported the security line in Houston was 4.5 hours long and stretched to the airport’s basement. She said it was a “disaster,” even with the presence of the ICE agents.

Watch CNN’s report above.

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