Eugene Airport Collects Donations, Meals for Unpaid TSA Workers During Shutdown

With 61,000 TSA employees across the country working without pay for more than 40 consecutive days, Eugene Airport Director Cathryn Stephens coordinated donation boxes at Mahlon Sweet Field and brought Food For Lane County's mobile food bank to the terminal to provide immediate relief to security staff struggling to cover basic expenses.

The Department of Homeland Security's funding lapsed on February 14, 2026, triggering a partial shutdown that left TSA workers and Customs and Border Protection agents without paychecks while the rest of the federal government remained fully funded. By the time donation boxes appeared at the airport's security checkpoint and administrative office on March 27, the shutdown had stretched past 40 days and was closing in on the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history, a record it surpassed around March 29 when it eclipsed 44 days.

Stephens said that in past funding lapses, airport staff responded with small gestures like buying TSA workers a meal, but the scale of this shutdown had escalated to the point where workers "really need some assistance."

Food For Lane County, the Eugene-based nonprofit established in 1984 and a distribution partner of Feeding America, operated a mobile food bank at the terminal and connected TSA employees to additional assistance programs. The organization, headquartered at 770 Bailey Hill Road, brought resources directly to workers who could not easily leave their posts.

The donation drive included specific guidance to make the aid as practical as possible. Gas gift cards were identified as especially useful, given that many TSA agents commute to Mahlon Sweet Field. Airport officials asked that all gift cards be donated in $10 increments so aid could be distributed equitably across staff, and advised donors not to contribute cash cards usable at any location.

Nationally, the financial strain produced measurable operational consequences. The TSA's unscheduled absence rate averaged 6% during the shutdown, triple the pre-shutdown baseline of roughly 2%. The callout rate peaked at 11% on one Monday in late March, producing hours-long security lines at airports across the country. More than 300 TSA workers had resigned roughly a month into the shutdown, with nearly 500 total officers leaving their positions by the time the Eugene story ran. DHS noted that by mid-March, TSA workers were going without pay "for the third time in nearly six months."

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, ICE agents were deployed near security checkpoints to offset staffing shortages. Stephens confirmed Eugene had not experienced those disruptions and that no ICE agents had been deployed at Mahlon Sweet Field.

President Donald Trump ordered DHS to resume compensating TSA workers on March 28, drawing on funding from the pending reconciliation bill. DHS confirmed that most employees received at least two full retroactive paychecks, and the operational impact was swift: a four-hour security wait at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport dropped to under 10 minutes within a day of workers receiving back pay.

Despite the backpay order, Stephens kept the donation boxes in place. "We'll keep them out until the funding actually happens," she said. "Keep in mind, it will still take quite a bit of time for those paychecks to get to the workers." With the Senate on a two-week recess and Congress still deadlocked over a permanent appropriations fix, that timeline remained uncertain.