TSA Lines Are About To Get A Lot Worse

Transportation Security Administration officers are feeling the squeeze of the latest government shutdown, and it could translate into longer lines at airports across the country once agents start missing paychecks this coming Friday.

“Two things will happen,” predicted Mike Gayzagian, a TSA worker and head of his local union. “People will start calling out because they have to look for other jobs, and the people who have other [offers] will take them and leave the agency.”

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t been funded for 25 days as Democrats demand some accountability for the president’s unpopular immigration crackdown. Some DHS personnel, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, continue to be paid due to the One Big Beautiful Bill, but TSA officers are among those who have to work without paychecks until there’s a deal. So far, the White House and Republicans have not relented.

Travelers are already running into unusually long lines at some major airports, such as Houston and Atlanta, but union officials said the staffing woes are likely to become more widespread as the shutdown drags on. For the last pay period, workers received only a partial paycheck that covered the last week of work before the lapse occurred.

Gayzagian, who’s president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2617, said he’s been seeing around two resignations a day among the roughly 2,500 officers in New England, a number he expects to climb.

“At some point, everybody is just going to run out of money,” he said.

Workers from several airports expressed frustration at how little attention this partial shutdown has received compared to previous ones that impacted a larger slice of the government.

“It seems like nobody even knows we’re not getting paid this time,” said Rachel Burnett-Parker, a TSA officer in Boise, Idaho.

She said she had to leave work earlier than normal Tuesday to relieve her husband of child care duties before he left for his own job. The couple has pulled their 1-year-old out of day care during the shutdown to save money.

“I cannot afford child care,” Burnett-Parker said. “A lot of people talk about how they’re trying to do Uber Eats and stuff like that to make enough money to get by.”

Senate Democrats have said they will continue to block funding bills for DHS unless Republicans and the Trump administration agree to some basic curbs on ICE and Border Patrol, like implementing stronger use-of-force protocols and banning face masks for agents. Polling has shown a strong majority of Americans believe the administration has gone too far with its deportation campaign in cities like Minneapolis, where two anti-ICE protesters were fatally shot by federal agents.

The relatively narrow scope of the shutdown has reinforced a long-standing sense of second-class citizenry at TSA. Its workers were put on a lower payscale than other federal employees when the agency was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and it was years before they had the right to collectively bargain like other government workers. The Trump administration has tried to strip that right away and dissolve the agency’s union, though an injunction has kept the union contract in place for now.

TSA officers generally don’t make a lot of money. Most positions start with a salary in the low- to mid-$40,000’s, according to the federal government’s jobs board. A lot of workers have relied on donated food and gas cards during shutdowns, but there seems to be less support during this lapse. Burnett-Parker said her airport break room has a fraction of the free canned goods it had compared to the previous shutdown.

Cameron Cochems, a union leader at TSA in Boise, said a lot of younger employees could go find different jobs for comparable pay and not have to wonder if they’ll be working without pay. He said he was recently talking with other officers while on break, and several of them said they will probably quit if they make it to April without a check.

“No one wants people to miss their flights,” Cochems said. “When passengers think about an extra minute they have to wait, that’s someone [a worker] whose life is being upended. I hope people think of it that way.”