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Two Killed, Dozens Injured In Runway Collision At LaGuardia Airport; 13 U.S. Airports Will See ICE Officers At TSA Checkpoints; Flyers Face Unpredictable Wait Times As TSA Officers Go Unpaid; Trump Sending ICE Agents To Airports Amid TSA Shortage; Trump: No DHS Deal Until Senate Passes SAVE America Act; Iranian Parliament Speaker: No Talks Held Between U.S. And Iran. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 23, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Yeah. There's a lot that needs to be investigated and the answer come up with some answers to make sure it doesn't happen again. David Soucie, thanks very much for joining us.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: And to our views, thanks very much for joining us. As well, you can always keep up with us on social media at @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, every weekday morning, 10 am Eastern, for two hours. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: A fatal collision rattles airports already reeling from a DHS shutdown. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK CABOT, PASSENGER ON AIR CANADA FIGHT: We went down for a regular landing. We came in pretty hard. We immediately hit something, and it was just chaos in there. About five seconds later, we had come to a stop, but in that short period, I mean, everybody was hunkered down and everybody screaming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That's one passenger's chilling account of the tragic collision at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. You're looking at new video showing the immediate aftermath on the tarmac. It comes as we're learning that a flight attendant was found alive this morning outside the aircraft still strapped to her seat. That's according to a law enforcement source.

Here you can see the nose of the Air Canada plane. Look at that, completely destroyed. Officials confirmed that the pilot and copilot died and dozens of passengers were injured as investigators race to uncover how the plane collided with a fire truck on the runway. We're getting new audio from the crash. It's between another pilot who saw what happened and an air traffic controller in the tower.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRONTIER PILOT (voiceover): That wasn't good to watch.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER (voiceover): Yeah, I know I was here. I tried to reach out to them. And we were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.

FRONTIER PILOT (voiceover): Nah, man. You did the best you could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Of course, uncovering the root cause of any accident can take years, and often multiple factors are involved. Let's get straight to CNN's Shimon Prokupecz, who is at LaGuardia Airport. Shimon, it's still closed, I believe for another couple of hours. What are you learning from your sources about the cause of this collision? What they think right now?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: While all eyes right now are on the air traffic controller. It's, you know, they have a really tough job. And you heard that air traffic controller's voice there. He was dealing with a lot. There was another emergency. This is worst case scenario for air traffic controllers. Of course, you know something that seems so routine, almost on a daily basis. They're managing so much, but crash trucks and fire trucks and telling them, yes, to clear them to go into the runway. It is the job of the air traffic controller to manage that, to give clearance to vehicles to enter the runway. And that's what happened here.

I want to just kind of just show you the scene behind me here a little bit as quickly as I could, just because nothing has really changed out here. The plane is still in the same spot we saw it last night. The truck, the crash truck that the plane collided with, that still remains here on its side. So, it's unclear here when the airport would reopen. It's ultimately up to the NTSB as they investigate the crash site.

And as I said, one of the things they're going to be certainly looking at is what the air traffic controller was communicating with the fire truck crew, but also the planes. Here is some of that harrowing moments that sort of chilling moment when the air traffic controller is talking to the officers in the fire truck.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Frontier 4195, just stop there please. Stop, stop, stop, stop, truck one, stop, stop, stop. Stop truck one! Stop! "Truck one! Stop!" "Jazz 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And I don't think anyone realized how serious this crash was at that moment. I mean, they could see the pictures. But that air traffic controller telling those two officers, the port authority police officers, that are in this crash truck, to stop, stop, stop, just seconds after clearing them, hoping to avoid this collision. Sadly, that did not happen, and the plane was coming in at over 100 miles an hour, so you can imagine what that collision must have been like.

The other thing, you know, Dana, this could have been so much worse. I mean, this is so horrific already, but it is sort of, in some ways, the way these two, the truck and the plane collided. The plane hit the truck. I mean, in the middle, had it gone any more closer to the front, those officers probably would have been killed just because of the sheer force of this crash. Those two pilots were killed, and that flight attendant you talked about, my goodness, she survived. She was in the front of the plane, in her seat, thrown from the plane, from the force of this crash.

[12:05:00]

And hopefully later today, we'll learn some more about those pilots, and certainly, more information about the flight attendants and that one flight attendant who did remain on the plane and the work that that person did, and hopefully here soon, we'll get more information from the NTSB.

BASH: It's so chilling to hear that air traffic controller trying to stop this, desperately trying to stop this. And then trying to tell the pilots, we're going to send help, and clearly the pilots didn't make it. It's just horrible. Shimon, thank you so much for that reporting. Really appreciate it. This tragic crash is deepening travel chaos across the country.

Today, the Trump administration is sending ICE agents to at least 13 U.S. airports. They say, to ease the TSA workload. You can see them here in airports in Newark, New Jersey, Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston. And as we've been reporting, travelers are dealing with lines stretched for hours, unpaid TSA agents are struggling to keep operations going. 38 days. 38 days into the DHS shutdown.

CNN's Ryan Young is still at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta in Atlanta. How are the lines looking now? And describe how the ICE agents there are interacting and are they helping?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Both great questions. Sunday, apparently, was record numbers. This place was crushed, and some of what's happened on Sunday is expecting Monday. So that's why, right now, you can see the lines that snake around this building. This is a TSA PreCheck line, which is normally shorter, but you can see it wrapping around baggage, at one point it was outside the building.

And I'll take this walk with Leon, as we've been showing you this stuff. The line continues. I mean, this is hours and hours long. People have been sitting in line for more than four hours to get through this. You asked about the ICE agents. Great question. Because obviously, these travelers have seen those agents walking the hallways. They have been all over the place, but they're not directly, sort of interacting with the public here. They're not checking anyone in. They're not helping move anyone through security. So yes, there's a presence here, but they're not helping to do anything to alleviate all this pressure here in public.

Of course, there's tons of media here that are helping cover this story because of the fact it's all about the agents who have called out sick. We believe, right now at the regular checkpoint, there's about six agents who are working the lines up front, so that's helping move things through. The TSA PreCheck line is actually longer than the main checkpoint line.

And I'm walking you this direction because I want everyone to see the active lines here at the airport, because that's when you get a good sense about how the security lines are working. We've actually tracked at least seven people today who have given us a different estimate for the time they spent anywhere from four hours to two hours and that's mostly a PreCheck group.

So, here's the line. If you look through here, you can see how many of the empty lines there are here. We counted at one point maybe four active open lines. We talked to the TSA administrator, a Stewart for the Union today, telling us, hey, this might be the new normal. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But I guess the question that now has to be asked, is this going to be the new norm? You know, is every weekend, you know, going to be a five, six-hour wait at the checkpoints to get on your flight. If you can even make it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: So, Dana, we actually saw TSA agents sitting in their seats there with ICE agents next to them, but they weren't actually taking those boarding passes to let people through. So, people have been waiting in this line non-stop, talking to airport administration. They're really trying to come up with new ways to handle this. Delta has actually surged more workers into this area to help out with the TSA operations, to get people up close.

Because honestly, to stand in this line normally is two hours before you get to the next line that gets you through at this point. But it's a cascading effect, because so many people are missing their flights. It's having a domino effect throughout the rest of the air traveling, so something we continue to watch. The pain is real.

BASH: But before I let you go, Ryan, real quick. You said that you've seen ICE agents walking around but not engaged in helping. Is it your sense that they're just kind of on the exterior at checkpoints, helping with security there? What are they doing if they're not helping with the lines?

[12:10:00] YOUNG: Great question. So, what they've done here is the Atlanta Police Department has added more officers. ICE has added more officers because they're worried about all the people here from a security standpoint. So, a lot of times we're seeing those agents, sitting close to the doors. Watching people as they come through, but not actually interacting with them, and definitely not here at the checkpoints.

So that would be where they could do something if they were standing here at the checkpoints and maybe helping people with those boarding passes. That's not something that we are seeing. Maybe they get trained up for that, but that is not what's going on as we speak right now.

BASH: Interesting. Thank you so much, Ryan, as always. And coming up. We go inside the political battle behind the staggering security lines that you just saw there and elsewhere. President Trump is now telling Republicans, dismiss any deal to fund the TSA unless it's paired with what he wants to change voting laws. Plus, stocks are soaring after the president backs off his threat to obliterate Iran's power plants. He claims talks are underway. Tehran says otherwise.

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[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Passengers at airports across the country are waiting hours in security lines as hundreds of TSA agents call out rather than work without pay. But President Trump's message to Republicans in Congress today is, don't make a deal to pay those workers unless Democrats agree to hold a vote on his voter ID law as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: What I announced yesterday about ICE, the Democrats called, we want to settle. We want to settle. And I told the people, don't settle. Don't settle because we have something bigger. Only settle if you get the SAVE America Act, voter ID, and so important proof of citizenship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This morning, ICE agents are fanning out across 13 airports in big cities across the country in an effort to speed up security lines. But listen to what TSA agent and union leader Aaron Barker said this morning on CNN new central.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AARON BARKER, TSA WORKER: To just throw them on the checkpoint like that, I think that there is a risk before disaster, one create chaos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters. Hello everybody. Happy Monday, unless you're in a security line somewhere.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR & WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Seriously.

BASH: David Chalian, what do you make of this decision to put ICE at the airports?

CHALIAN: Well, you know, he owned that decision all by himself, like Kaitlan Collins asked him, like, who came up with that? He's like, oh, this is my idea. I think after maybe you saw a Fox segment where this was floated.

BASH: And our colleague Brian Stelter went into detail about that Fox, but --

CHALIAN: Yeah. And called up Tom Homan. He says, oh, he thought it was a great idea. What's interesting to me about it most of all, like just stepping back here on the politics of this moment. Donald Trump, to me, concedes the point that he knows with all Republican control of government and with him in the White House, whatever the Hill politics are of Democrats not giving their votes or not, the country is likely to blame Republicans who are in charge of everything with chaos and as things go badly, and he's seeking a way to alleviate the chaos.

So, the merits of putting ICE there are not but he is looking for a way to avoid the pain and the chaos that that TSA agent was just describing, which to me, indicates he understands he's on the hook with the country to make sure this doesn't get out of control.

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: I think what is curious to me is it's not just the merits of should ICE be there or not. What we're seeing, you're seeing it in your CNN reporting. My Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleagues are seeing it as they're on the ground at the airport. The actual implementation of this is just causing a little bit more confusion. It doesn't look like the ICE agents are doing much, particularly, I can say it at Atlanta's airport, you know --

BASH: That's what Ryan was just reporting.

MITCHELL: Exactly. So, it's like, so then what's the point of doing that? Just so you can say they're there, that's just going to lead to more frustration, because people are like, well, what's the point of sending in ICE if they're not actually helping the situation get better? So, I don't know if he's really solving anything here?

BASH: Well, so yesterday morning, on State of the Union, Tom Homan, who is in charge of this, was on our show. The president announced like half an hour beforehand that Homan would be in charge of this and it would be implemented. I asked him about it. His answer was a little bit different, actually a lot different, from what the Department of Transportation secretary said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: Certainly, a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit and makes sure people don't go through those exits, entering the airport through the exits, and that that would stuff like that relief that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines. So, wherever we can provide extra security, I don't see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because you're not trained in that.

SEAN DUFFY, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: TSA agents are law enforcement. They know how to pat people down. They know how to run the X-ray machine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHELBY TALCOTT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, SEMAFOR: Yeah. I mean, clearly within the administration, there are differing opinions about what this is going to look like. And I think that just, you know, doubles down on the fact that the president did come up with this very quickly. We were told that this came as a surprise to some of the DHS officials over the weekend.

[12:20:00]

And so, you even saw in your interview with Tom Homan, he noted that they were coming up with a plan sort of in real time, and they were going to have it by the end of the day. And so all of that shows that in this administration, in particular, often times the decisions are being made by the president himself and everybody else around him just sort of jumps in and tries to figure it out.

But I do think that this is essentially a band aid on this situation, and the administration is now able to say, well, we're doing something to help. Is it a long-term solution? Clearly not. But they're doing this in part because they can then say, well, we're sending these ICE agents in to help. What are Democrats --

BASH: Well, and so, just back to -- I totally agree with you, but to your point about the president looking for a way band aid to alleviate the pain, absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Well, also the question of how he's doing it using ICE agents, and ICE and what they were deployed to do in Minneapolis and elsewhere was how they got to the DHS shutdown in the first place. Listen to what Hakeem Jeffries said about this yesterday to me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them. We have already seen how ICE conducts itself. These are untrained individuals when it comes to doing the current job that they have for the most part. Let alone deploying them in close exposure and highly sensitive situations at airports across the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CHALIAN: So, the raw politics of this, right, that Hakeem Jeffries is jumping on here is the fact that post Minneapolis, you know, where ICE agents sort of stand in the American mind, of popularity, it's pretty low. The issue of Donald Trump's handling of immigration, broadly, he's upside down on what was one of his strongest issues. He's sort of minus 10 now on that issue.

So what Hakeem Jeffries there is doing is sort of like welcoming the president's move here because he thinks it plays to his party politically, as does they think, now tying this to the SAVE America Act, as you were noting and saying, OK, so here's a short thing that the Republicans -- John Thune is not passing in the Senate, that now you're saying you're going to tie this whole thing too. That's not going anywhere. It is emboldening Democrats both of these moves right now to think that they can still proceed apace as they are doing here in the talks over the shutdown.

BASH: And it's tying the Republican leader's hands behind their back. I mean, John Thune, for example, he the Senate majority leader, is trying to find a way out of the DHS shutdown. Our colleague Lauren Fox has new reporting about the back and forth and where they thought that maybe they had some kind of potential deal.

Trump was offered an off ramp to the DHS shutdown, but he didn't take it yet, and that was fund every part of the Department except enforcement operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As part of the plan. Trump was told lawmakers could fund immigration pieces of ICE using reconciliation, the arcane budget process that allows Senate Republicans to pass bills with just 51 votes, and the president said, nope.

MITCHELL: Yeah. And I think it muddies it even more so, because throughout this shutdown, Republicans have been saying, it's Democrats who are playing fast and loose. Let's just fund DHS, not -- let's not worry about these. What Republicans would say separate conversations about ICE and immigration enforcement policy. And they said, no, this is just a funding fight. Fund DHS, stop playing games.

We've heard that from Republicans for weeks, and now it's President Trump who is putting in, you know, putting in the SAVE Act not willing to, you know, accept this cleaner funding bill, so to speak. And I think it does kind of take away what has been Republicans talking points in Congress.

TALCOTT: And the president also pushing ICE for this operation. Specifically, I think, really speaks to his mindset, which is he is very publicly saying, I'm still defending ICE. I'm still supporting them. And so, you can kind of take a look at where he stands with these negotiations as it pertains to ICE operations, by the fact that he is sending them into the airports and publicly backing them in this way. I think that -- I think that says a lot about where he's -- where his thinking is in these DHS --

BASH: And nothing matters to him more than this voting bill, which we've been talking about a lot. Up next, President Trump ratchets down the rhetoric. Says, he feels good about making a peace deal with Iran. I'll talk to someone who's been in the room with President Trump's negotiating team about what that might look like.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: Moments ago, the Iranian Parliament speaker added more confusion to a morning of the, he said -- he said between the U.S. and Iran about the state of the war and whether or not there are talks. Just now, the Iranian speaker wrote on X, quote. No negotiations have been held with the U.S., and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped. Just compare that statement to President Trump speaking this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have had very, very strong talks. We'll see where they lead. We have points -- major points of agreement, I would say almost all points of agreement. So, they called -- I didn't call, they called, they want to make a deal.