The second government shutdown of the year, this one affecting only the Department of Homeland Security, went into effect on Feb. 14. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are still being funded by last year's One Big Beautiful Bill, and FEMA and the Coast Guard have funds to pay employees for several months, the Transportation Security Administration is shit out of luck.
Last week, TSA agents missed their first full paychecks. Some employees are still at work, with the promise of back pay when the shutdown ends. But others can't or won't forego paychecks. Hundreds have quit the agency over the last month, and others are just not coming in—more than half of TSA agents at one Houston airport called out sick this weekend, and more than a third in Atlanta.
This shortage of TSA agents to process travelers has led to hours-long waits to pass through airport security. Baltimore: more than an hour. Houston: three hours. Atlanta: four hours. JFK Airport in New York is simply telling its travelers good luck, and not reporting wait times anymore.
Beginning this morning, the Trump administration has deployed ICE agents to airports across the country, ostensibly to help TSA with the bottleneck. In practice, they appear to be contributing as much and in the same way as when the NYPD "floods" the subways with officers who stand there and play Candy Crush all day.
Tonya Johnson, 46, has worked in the Newark airport for eight years, serving bagels, coffee and pizza in Terminal C. As she watched an ICE patrol pass by her workplace on Monday morning, she was not impressed. “I don’t know what their purpose is,” she said, adding, “They’re just standing there, and they’re in the way.”
It's not clear whether the idea to send ICE agents to airports was Clay Travis's or Donald Trump's. ("Mine. That was mine. That was like the paper clip. You know the story of the paper clip?" said Trump.) Either way, we'd like to take a moment to salute to the men and women of ICE for their service to heavy-handed metaphor. Some gave all. All had Cinnabon.
