As Shutdown Drags On, DHS Warns Over 1,000 TSA Officers Have Left Jobs—and Staffers Are Set to Go Unpaid Again
· Time
As the partial government shutdown continues to drag on, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning that more than 1,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers have quit their jobs, and that it will soon run out of money to pay department staffers.
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“Ahead of the FIFA World Cup and summer travel, this loss has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased TSA’s ability to meet passenger demand and left critical gaps in staffing, as each new recruit requires 4-6 MONTHS of training,” DHS said in a post on X on Monday evening.
The shutdown, which began on Feb. 14 amid a standoff between Democratic and Republican lawmakers over immigration enforcement, is the longest in American history.
The lapse in funding previously left many DHS employees—including TSA agents—working without pay for weeks. Since TSA agents are deemed essential workers, they are expected to continue working during a lapse in appropriations, even if they’re not being paid. But many TSA officers called out of work last month so they could pick up additional jobs to pay their bills and hundreds more left their jobs at the agency entirely, leaving airports around the U.S. understaffed.
Amid the shortage of TSA agents, airports across the country reported hours-long security wait times last month—one of the most visible effects of the shutdown.
Other agencies within DHS have also been impacted by the lapse in funding, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Coast Guard.
In response to the air travel chaos, President Donald Trump ordered on March 27 that TSA staffers be paid using existing funds. In the days after officers received their retroactive paychecks, wait times began improving at multiple airports that had been struggling with long security lines. The Trump Administration has drawn funding from the President’s One Big Beautiful Bill in order to pay TSA staffers during the shutdown.
Beyond the TSA, the President later ordered DHS to pay “each and every employee of DHS with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the Democrat-led DHS shutdown.”
But last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the department is going to run out of funds to pay staffers by the beginning of May.
“My payroll through DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks, so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens, there is no emergency funds after that,” Mullin told Fox and Friends last week. “I’ve got one payroll left and there is no more emergency funds, so the President can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there.”
It’s unclear how much longer the DHS shutdown will continue for. Trump has set a deadline of June 1 for lawmakers to pass an appropriations bill that would fund DHS.
At the core of the funding dispute is Democrats’ demand for new guardrails on federal immigration agents. In the aftermath of federal officers fatally shooting two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January, Democratic lawmakers refused to pass a bill to fund DHS that didn’t include such guardrails. But Republicans have claimed that Democrats’ demands would hinder DHS from carrying out the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.