Americans who have flown recently have likely encountered airports defined by hourslong lines and general chaos.
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President Donald Trump has a new solution: Call in paid Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to help staff airports full of unpaid Transportation Security Administration workers.
Currently, TSA workers are working without pay or calling out entirely as a result of a partial government shutdown that started on February 14. The shutdown closed off funding for most of the Department of Homeland Security, leading to delays for travelers trying to navigate security.
In January, lawmakers squabbled over the funding package for DHS, as Democrats pushed for reforms to ICE and Customs and Border Protection following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good. The rest of the government was ultimately funded — although there was technically a brief broader shutdown — but lawmakers still haven’t reached a resolution on Department of Homeland Security funding, including money for TSA.
However, even as Democrats tried to target ICE in their specific funding demands, workers at the agency remain paid through a tranche of funding from President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — making ICE, as the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute wrote, “shut-down proof.” The law included $75 billion in funding for immigration enforcement through fiscal year 2029, and that money is still available despite the rest of DHS being shut down.
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That’s created a DHS pay disparity: TSA workers have been on the clock without guaranteed pay since mid-February while ICE workers receive paychecks.
TSA officer callouts topped 3,450 over the weekend, and hundreds of workers have quit entirely, according to data shared with Business Insider by DHS. A message on Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s website Monday morning warns travelers that, “due to current federal conditions,” they should allow at least four hours for screenings.
And there might be no end in sight for a funding resolution, as Trump called for the passage of the SAVE America Act, which faces major hurdles to passage in the Senate, in conjunction with DHS funding. That bill would require voters to prove their citizenship when they register to vote.
“This pointless, reckless shutdown of our homeland security workforce has caused more than 400 TSA officers to quit and thousands to call out from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement. “While the Democrats continue to put the safety, dependability, and ease of our air travel at risk, President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted. This will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimize air travel disruptions.”
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees — the union representing TSA agents — decried the move to send in ICE. Kelley said in a statement that ICE agents “are not trained or certified in aviation security.”
“TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints — skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that,” Kelley said. “Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
