ATLANTA – Regardless of politics or destination, American air travelers were unified by one desire Saturday: it's time to pay Transportation Security Administration employees.
Christian Childress, a private flight attendant, sees the aviation system up close. When the Redwood City, California, resident is working, he doesn’t wait in TSA lines. But he frequently goes through a checkpoint when flying commercial to get to his job.
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Childress said the shutdown effects have been “hit or miss” thus far. He came to the Atlanta airport nearly three hours before his 1:30 p.m. Saturday flight to Nashville, Tennessee, for a leisure trip. Some passengers have been arriving even earlier in Atlanta — one of the world's busiest airports — spooked that delays could cause them to miss flights.
“Issue No. 1 should be paying the people who need to get paid and keeping our air travel system secure,” Childress said. “Then they can debate whatever they want to debate about homeland security.”
TSA officers haven't gotten a paycheck since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security partly shut down on Feb. 14. Democrats balked at funding the agency, while other departments are unaffected, demanding changes to immigration enforcement by federal agents following the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
But concerns about long airport lines are increasingly capturing attention.
President Donald Trump said Saturday he will order federal immigration officers to take a role in airport security starting Monday unless Democrats agree to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
In a pair of social media posts, Trump first threatened and then said he had made plans to place officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in airports.
The president said ICE agents would bring the administration’s immigration crackdown into the nation’s airports, arresting “all Illegal Immigrants” with a focus on those from Somalia.
“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, “GET READY.” NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” Trump wrote.
Funding for the department failed to advance in the Senate on Friday after Democrats declined to support a bill. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would offer an alternative measure on Saturday to fund only TSA.
Trump did not offer additional detail on how ICE would take a role in airport security and what it meant for TSA, which screens passengers and luggage for hazardous items.
The move appears to be a pointed effort to expand the immigration enforcement operations that have become a sticking point for Democrats in Congress.
“If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before,” Trump said.
Some passengers said it's time for Democrats to give up on the shutdown.
“I don't want to go between the Democrats and the Republicans, but I think the Democrats are holding everything up because they can't get their way,” said Tyrone Williams, a retiree from the Atlanta suburb of Ellenwood. He was queued up for screening before his flight to Philadelphia on Saturday.
Atlanta's checkpoint wait time spiked as high as 90 minutes early on Saturday before melting away to nothing in the afternoon on what is typically one of the slowest days of the week for air travel. But staffing shortages have forced airports to close checkpoints at times, with wait times swinging dramatically in some cities.
Merissa Thomas arrived in Las Vegas on Saturday from Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C.
She went through TSA’s checkpoint quickly and called on Congress to “prioritize” funding TSA.
“I’m so grateful for people who are willing to sacrifice a lot to make sure we’re safe,” Thomas said.
The vast majority of employees at TSA are considered essential and roughly 50,000 continue to work without pay during the government funding lapse. Nationwide on Thursday, about 10% of TSA officers missed work, the department reported. Absentee rates were two or three times higher in places.
Union leaders and federal officials say TSA officers are under financial pressure. Airport screeners have spent nearly half of the past 171 days with paychecks delayed by politics — 43 days last fall during the longest government shutdown in history, four days earlier this year during a brief funding lapse, and now 36 days and counting during the current shutdown.
At least 376 officers have quit since this shutdown began, according to officials, exacerbating turnover at an agency that historically has had some of the U.S. government’s highest attrition and lowest employee morale.
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Associated Press writers Collin Binkley in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Ty O'Neil in Las Vegas, Nevada contributed.