Travelers at a growing number of U.S. airports are encountering shuttered security checkpoints and waiting hours in lines that extend well outside the terminals as the partial government shutdown enters its fifth week.
About 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers have been working without pay since Feb. 14 as Congress remains at an impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the T.S.A., because of a disagreement on immigration enforcement.
T.S.A. officers missed their first full paycheck on Friday after receiving only a partial paycheck at the end of February. As bills and rent come due, a growing number of T.S.A. employees have picked up second jobs, sometimes calling out sick to do so. More than 300 officers have quit since the shutdown started, according to the department.
“Our officers are coming to work, but there’s going to be a breaking point sooner or later,” said Christine Vitel, a T.S.A. officer at Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 777, a union representing T.S.A. officers in Illinois and Wisconsin.
Ms. Vitel said at least two members of her union had been evicted because they were unable to pay their rent. During the lengthy government shutdown last fall, she said, government employees received extensions or interest-free loans from landlords and financial institutions. This time, she said, much of the public isn’t even aware there’s a shutdown. Ms. Vitel has considered asking her father for a loan so she can pay her credit card bills.
“People deserve their pay,” she said.
D.H.S. did not respond to a request for comment.
Longer Waits and Missed Flights
A handful of small airports bore the brunt of the disruptions in the early stages of the shutdown, but in recent days the long lines have spread to busier hubs.
Security wait times at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston reached two hours in one of its terminals on Monday. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the world’s busiest airport, wait times surpassed 75 minutes on Monday morning. On Sunday evening, three of Atlanta’s four domestic security checkpoints were temporarily closed while the remaining checkpoint experienced wait times of more than an hour, according to the airport’s real-time wait tracker.
LaGuardia Airport, in New York, also experienced long wait times on Sunday, with travelers complaining on social media about missing their flights and the airport warning passengers to arrive three hours before their departure time. Newark Liberty International Airport’s Terminal B had a 71-minute wait around 4 p.m. on Monday.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, in Austin, Texas, which has experienced consistently long lines for several days, posted a time-lapse video early Monday showing its security line at 4:30 a.m. stretching far outside the terminal entrance. The airport urged travelers to arrive at least two and a half hours before their scheduled departure.
Calls for a Funding Deal
T.S.A. officers, whose salaries average about $50,000, will receive back pay when the shutdown ends. But that’s little comfort when many of them are still recovering from the record 43-day shutdown last fall, said Angela Grana, a T.S.A. officer at Durango-La Plata County Airport in southwest Colorado and the regional vice president of A.F.G.E. Local 1127.
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“We’re still trying to pay the late fees,” she said. “We’re still trying to ask our creditors to please give us a break.”
In the meantime, some aviation experts say the T.S.A. is being used as a pawn in a political standoff.
“T.S.A. is being held hostage,” said Sheldon H. Jacobson, an aviation security researcher and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work formed the basis for the creation of T.S.A. PreCheck. He said Homeland Security officials could choose to reallocate money to pay T.S.A. staff if they wanted to. “But nobody wants to take those steps, because you lose political chips when you compromise.”
The chief executives of major airlines including American, Delta, Southwest and United urged Congress in an open letter on Sunday to immediately fund D.H.S. and pass legislation that would pay T.S.A. officers and air traffic controllers during future shutdowns. (Air traffic controllers are being paid during this partial shutdown because Congress has already funded their employer, the Department of Transportation.)
“Americans — who live in your districts and home states — are tired of long lines at airports, travel delays and flight cancellations caused by shutdown after shutdown,” the letter read. “Yet, once again air travel is the political football amid another government shutdown.”
President Trump had his own message for T.S.A. employees on Saturday: “GO TO WORK! I promise that I will never forget you!!!”
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Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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