WASHINGTON – Airports across the country could be forced to shut down completely because of the Dem-led partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, a top TSA official warned Tuesday.
“We’re overstretched,” Acting Deputy Transportation Security Administrator Adam Stahl told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.
“Frankly, there is nothing else we can do. As the weeks go on, if this continues, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that we may have to literally close the airports, especially the smaller ones, if the callout rates increase.
“Most of these officers cannot enter.”
TSA inspectors — who make an average of $45,000 a year — have been working without full pay for weeks, and cracks in the system are quickly becoming apparent. They received a small portion of the salary at the end of February and missed the full amount last Friday.
Airports across the country have been warning travelers to arrive at the airport 3 to 4 hours early to compensate for long lines.
A full 10% of TSA screeners were off duty Sunday—up from about 2% every day before the shutdown.
About 370 TSA employees have left their jobs over the past month, according to DHS.
Funding for TSA and other parts of DHS ended on Feb. 14 because of Senate Democrats’ veto of the GOP-passed DHS appropriations bill, which calls for major concessions on immigration enforcement policy.
ICE and the Border Patrol were fully funded as part of the previous bill.
Republicans have conceded to some of their demands, such as deploying body cameras, and the Trump administration has scaled back Minnesota’s mass immigration sweeps.
But other demands, such as stricter warrant requirements and a ban on wearing masks, have been red lines for the GOP.
DHS has been able to pay certain categories of workers, including law enforcement officers in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol, and the US Secret Service, as well as the US Coast Guard.
But some of the support staff at those agencies are leaders, and so are TSA employees.
This is the third outage in the past six months that has affected TSA workers.
“I talked to one police officer this week. She’s a single mother, and she has a special needs child, and she doesn’t have the money to take care of the special needs children,” Stahl recounted.
“It doesn’t make sense that we have Senate Democrats … holding people’s money hostage for political games, political participation.”
Security line wait times have exploded at some airports across the country, lasting nearly three hours in some cases due to TSA’s DHS woes caused by the shutdown.
“We’re seeing callout rates vary, but they continue to grow every day,” Stahl said. “We may have to close roads at selected airports. But if no action is taken, especially from Senate Democrats, this will get worse.”
“And there will be great pain for the passenger, three [to] waiting times of four hours at selected airports.”
