TSA Staffing Crisis Deepens as ICE Airport Deployment Fails to Break Shutdown Impasse

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Tuesday, security lines snaked all the way to the airport's subway terminal. Nearly 40% of the facility's TSA officers had called out, leaving travelers to queue for hours through a terminal that can operate fewer than half of its 37 screening checkpoints. "So that's 100% spring break loads going through the airport being processed through less than 50% of our TSA lanes," said Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for the Houston Airport System. "We worry conditions will only get worse at airports across the US until Congress ends this shutdown," he added.

Roughly 61,000 TSA employees are working without pay during the partial government shutdown, which began February 14. More than 450 TSA agents have quit in the nearly six weeks since the partial shutdown began, resulting in the "highest wait times in TSA history," a top Department of Homeland Security official told a House committee. More than 3,120 TSA officers did not show up to work Wednesday, a callout rate of 11.14%, just below the record of 11.76% set on Sunday. TSA workers are set to miss their second full paycheck this weekend, with no legislative resolution in sight.

President Trump's answer to the crisis was to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into airports. On Monday, ICE deployed hundreds of agents to 14 airports as the Trump administration sought to ease disruptions. Trump wrote on social media: "I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before." But the deployment did little to untangle lines or bridge the congressional impasse that created them. Wait times remained unpredictable as the shutdown continued into its sixth week, with some dropping dramatically after peak Monday travel fueled exceptional wait times.

The actual scope of ICE's role at airports was narrower than Trump's rhetoric suggested. White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN that agents would deploy to airports across the country to assist TSA officers with security at airport entrances and exits where lines had been particularly long, though he didn't believe agents would perform security screenings like monitoring X-ray machines. TSA union leaders were blunter. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA officers, said in a statement that TSA members "deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be." AFGE national president Everett Kelly called the ICE deployment "unacceptable," comparing it to "giving a person dying of pneumonia a teaspoon of cough syrup."

Trump also threatened to escalate further. If ICE agents proved unable to fix airport delays, he said he could "bring in the National Guard." On Monday he reportedly rejected a Republican plan to fund the rest of DHS, including TSA and FEMA, while leaving ICE funding aside temporarily, insisting lawmakers "only settle" if they could simultaneously pass a federal elections overhaul.

The airport disruption even delayed an NTSB team member flying to LaGuardia Airport to investigate a deadly crash between an Air Canada jet and a Port Authority fire truck. "Our air traffic control specialist, who was in line with TSA for three hours until we called in Houston to beg to see if we can get her through so we can get here," NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.

A creative workaround briefly made headlines before collapsing. Elon Musk posted on X on Saturday that he wanted "to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country." Trump publicly embraced the idea, telling reporters, "I think it's great, let him do that." The White House then rejected the offer, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson citing legal challenges tied to Musk's involvement with federal government contracts. Jackson told reporters, "We greatly appreciate Elon's generous offer," but said "the fastest way to ensure TSA employees — and all DHS employees — get paid is for Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security."

The legislative math remains grim. Senate Republicans rejected a Democratic proposal to end the partial shutdown, with Majority Leader John Thune dismissing it as a list of demands including changes to immigration enforcement operations. Democrats have pushed for reforms scaling back ICE's operations following several violent incidents that left civilians dead. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer proposed an alternative measure to fund just TSA, but that effort also failed to advance. Meanwhile, the TSA chief warned Congress that newly hired officers will not be able to work checkpoints "well into the 2026 FIFA World Cup," calling it "a dire situation" and warning of "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."

Congress is scheduled to leave Friday for a two-week Easter recess. Thune has said he cannot see lawmakers taking that break if the government remains shut down, but no deal has materialized. DHS officials say that even if the shutdown were to end soon, its impact on TSA staffing levels will weigh on the agency well into the busy summer travel season. "They're quitting because they have no choice," said Hydrick Thomas, TSA Council 100 president and an agent at JFK Airport. "They don't have the finances to come to work.