On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order funding the TSA for the time being, meaning TSA workers are set to receive paychecks after weeks going without. However that might not mean airport lines are back to normal.
Some airports are still dealing with the fallout from the partial government shutdown which led to high rates of callouts among TSA workers, as well as hundreds of workers who turned in their resignations out of financial necessity.
“Today, at the direction of President Trump and @SecMullinDHS, TSA has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce,” DHS said in a social media statement on Friday. “TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30.” The statement referred to the shutdown as the “DHS Democrat shutdown.”
After nearly six weeks without a paycheck, experts are also hopeful that TSA workers will actually be paid on Monday, but say that workers are still up against a lot regardless, as the result of back-to-back shutdowns.
Joseph Cerletti, a Lead TSA Officer at the Oakland airport and assistant chief of the local TSA union, told ABC News that workers are struggling. “Morale is really, really, really low at Oakland airport right now, nationwide as well,” Cerletti said. “Two shutdowns, I believe in less than six months actually. I have been describing it as a 1-2 punch,” Cerletti added.
Meanwhile, while some airports are seeing lines moving, others are still coping with the fallout of the most recent shutdown, which has lasted 45 days, breaking the previous 43-day record. According to CNN’s airport tracking tool, Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport still had 75-minute wait times on Monday morning, far longer than usual. Likewise, some airports are still issuing travel warnings, urging passengers to continue arriving at the airport early.
“Due to current federal conditions, passengers are advised to allow at least 4 hours or more for domestic and international screenings,” Hartsfield-Jackson’s website warned Monday morning, before later updating the message to allow for two hours.
Helping to drive down wait times is the fact that many TSA agents are coming back to work. Per a CNN report, on Friday, 3,560 TSA workers called out. By Saturday, that number was down to 2,800. Still, hundreds of TSA workers have left their jobs due to the strain of going without pay for weeks. While that could mean wait times stay elevated, it also may mean that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may remain at airports for the time being.
“We’re going to continue an ICE presence there, and until the airports feel like they’re in 100%, you know, in a posture where they can do normal operations,” Trump’s Border czar Tom Homan said in a CBS News interview on Sunday. “So if less TSA agents come back, that means we’ll keep more ICE agents there.”