The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said on Wednesday that airports across the country are experiencing the “highest wait times in TSA history”, as the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enters its sixth week.
At a House homeland security committee hearing, Ha Nguyen McNeill said her agency has been shut down for 50% of the fiscal year so far – a stretch that includes last year’s record-breaking 43‑day lapse in federal funding. She told lawmakers that by Friday, TSA employees will have missed $1bn in paychecks as a result of the closures.
“Many in our workforce have missed bill payments, received eviction notices, had their cars repossessed and utilities shut off, lost their childcare, defaulted on loans, damaged their credit line, and drained their retirement savings,” she said. “Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood and plasma, and taking on second jobs to make ends meet.”
Before the shutdown, McNeill noted, the TSA’s absence rate hovered at about 4%. Now, she said, “40 to 50% of their staff are calling out” because they simply cannot afford to work without pay.
She also warned that because it takes four to six months to train transportation security officers (TSOs), any new hires will not be ready to work checkpoints until well after the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “This is a dire situation,” McNeill said. “We are facing a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers at our airports for the World Cup games in less than 80 days.”
As Republicans on the homeland security committee continued to blame Democrats for the impasse, Democrats pressed McNeill on the transfer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to several US airports to assist the TSA. “These agents cannot do TSA’s job, nor should they, and they aren’t trained to do it,” said Bennie Thompson, the committee’s ranking member. “So we see images of ICE agents standing around or walking through terminals, doing nothing to reduce the lines at security checkpoints, while TSA personnel continue to do their jobs without pay because Republicans refuse to vote for legislation to fund TSA. It’s ridiculous and maddening, but not surprising.”
McNeill, despite underscoring the months-long training pipeline for TSOs, maintained that the ICE agents transferred to airports are performing “non-specialized screening functions” and have been “incredibly helpful to alleviate the burden on our workforce”.
Negotiations remain stalled on Capitol Hill after Democrats rejected the latest Republican proposal to fund much of the DHS – including the TSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), the coast guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) – while excluding ICE and placing its funding in a separate budget bill they hope to pass through reconciliation.
The GOP plan also omits the immigration enforcement reforms Democrats have demanded following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year. “ICE needs to act like every other law enforcement agency, with warrants, with badge numbers, with standards of conduct,” said Seth Magaziner, a Democratic representative, at Wednesday’s hearing.
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats presented a “reasonable, good faith” counteroffer on Wednesday. However, Republicans quickly rejected it. “They’re asking for things that have already been turned down. So it just seems like they’re going in circles,” said the Senate majority leader, John Thune.
Since ICE received $75bn through Trump’s sweeping policy bill last year, it has been largely insulated from the funding lapse affecting other DHS agencies.
Thomas Allan, the vice-commandant of the coast guard; Nicholas Andersen, the acting director of Cisa; and Victoria Barton, an associate administrator at Fema, also testified before the House committee alongside McNeill. Barton said that while some Fema staff can continue working thanks to the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), the fund has only $3.6bn remaining. If another major storm hits, she warned, the DRF could be depleted “pretty rapidly”.
