TSA Officers Quit After Not Being Paid

By Olivia Armstead 

Upwards of 400 TSA workers have quit their jobs since a partial government shutdown that started on Feb. 14, left them putting in hours of work without pay. 

Courtesy of The Fortune

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding was shut off due to demands by Democrats for reforms at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection following alleged abuses and the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, according to NBC News. 

TSA is under DHS and has approximately 65,000 employees, most of which are not currently getting paid. 50,000 of those workers are front line officers whose duty is to manage security at airports across the country. 

Financial strain is pushing workers to leave and find work elsewhere. 

“A TSA agent doesn’t make the most amount of money … and they’re paying rent and trying to put food on the table,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, per CNN. “They can’t actually make ends meet during this time. So they’re going to pick a different career path…” 

Due to working without pay, there has reportedly been a national callout rate of 10% at TSA on more than half the days the second week of March, according to Lauren Bis, the acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, per NBC News. This had made for excruciatingly long lines at TSA checkpoints in airports across the country, with many people risking missing their flights even after arriving at the airport hours early. 

Since the overwhelming number of TSA agent resignations, President Trump has sent hundreds of ICE agents to 14 airports to assist the remaining TSA officers, per CNN. The officers are reportedly not trained to operate the security checkpoints that are more than likely the source of delays, so they have been relegated to simpler tasks. 

Many out of state college students are worried about how this understaffing of TSA agents will affect their travels in the coming months. 

“One of my main concerns about the recent change is the amount of wait times in the airport. I have TSA Pre Check and Clear and those lines are sometimes closed due to the recent changes,” said Madison Manuel, an HU student from Miami, FL. “I have to wait in the longer lines and that means sometimes leaving four hours earlier than my flight is supposed to leave just so I can stand in the TSA line for two hours to make my flight on time.”