WASHINGTON — Airports across the country could soon be forced to shut down entirely due to the Democrat-led partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, a top TSA official warned Tuesday.
“We’re fully stretched,” acting Deputy Transportation Security Administration Administrator Adam Stahl told “Fox & Friends.”
“Frankly, there’s not much else we can do. As the weeks continue, if this continues, it’s not hyperbole to suggest that we may have to quite literally shut down airports, particularly smaller ones, if call-out rates go up.
“A lot of these officers can’t afford to come in.”
TSA screeners — who make an average of $45,000 per year — have been working without full pay for weeks, and cracks in the system are starting to rapidly show.
They received partial pay at the end of February and missed their full paychecks last Friday.
Airports across the country have been warning travelers to get to the airport 3 to 4 hours early to compensate for massive lines.
Fully 10% of TSA screeners called out of work on Sunday — up from around 2% daily before the shutdown.
Nearly 370 TSA workers have quit their jobs within the past month, according to the DHS.
Funding for the TSA and other parts of the DHS lapsed Feb. 14 due to Senate Democrats’ filibustering of a GOP-passed DHS appropriations bill, demanding sweeping concessions on immigration enforcement policy.
ICE and Border Patrol were fully funded as part of a previous bill.
Republicans have agreed to some of their demands, such as deploying body cameras, and the Trump administration wound down its massive immigration sweep in Minnesota.
But other demands, such as tighter warrant requirements and a ban on mask-wearing, have been red lines for the GOP.
DHS has been able to pay some categories of workers, including law enforcement officers in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the US Secret Service, as well as US Coast Guard military personnel.
But some of the support staff in those agencies aren’t getting paid, and neither are TSA workers.
This is the third funding lapse within the past six months that has impacted TSA workers.
“I talked to one officer this week. She’s a single mother, and she has a special needs child, and she can’t afford to pay for her special needs child care,” Stahl recounted.
“It’s frankly unconscionable that we have Senate Democrats that are … holding our folks’ financial livelihood hostage over political games, political partizanship.”
Security line wait times have exploded in some airports across the country, taking close to three hours in some cases due to the TSA’s DHS shutdown-induced woes.
“We’re seeing call-out rates vary, but they continue to increase every single day,” Stahl said. “We may need to collapse lanes at select airports. But if there’s no action taken, particularly from Senate Democrats, this is going to get worse.”
“And there will be significant pain by the passenger as well, three [to] four hour wait times at select airports.”
