A six-week stalemate over Department of Homeland Security funding left airports stretched thin and tens of thousands of DHS employees unpaid Friday, heightening fears of travel chaos during the busy spring-break period. Lawmakers remained deadlocked over immigration-enforcement provisions, leaving paychecks withheld for many of the roughly 270,000 DHS staffers even though most are required to continue working.
With Congress unable to reach agreement, the White House said President Donald Trump declared an emergency to allow airport screening officers to receive pay as soon as Monday. That action would apply to Transportation Security Administration personnel, but many other DHS employees — including personnel responsible for emergency response and coastal defense — would continue to work without pay as lawmakers left Washington for a two-week recess.
Earlier in the day the Senate unanimously approved a measure to restore funding for most DHS operations while attempting to address the immigration-enforcement dispute that triggered the impasse. Democrats backed that plan because it excluded funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); Republicans supported it because it did not impose the enforcement restrictions Democrats wanted.
House Republicans rejected the Senate approach and narrowly passed a stopgap to fund all DHS operations through late May, including immigration enforcement funding Democrats oppose. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would fund critical homeland-security functions but would not give ‘‘a blank check’’ to Trump’s immigration enforcement without reforms. It was uncertain whether the Senate would take up the House bill, and Democrats were expected to block it if it did.
The funding fight has worsened staffing shortages at airports. Of about 50,000 TSA security officers, many have called in sick or resigned rather than work without pay. On Thursday nearly 12% of TSA officers failed to report for duty systemwide, with absences exceeding a third of scheduled staff at JFK in New York and at airports in Baltimore, Houston and Atlanta. Travelers faced major delays and several-hour wait times on Friday, and airline officials warned conditions could deteriorate over the weekend without a clear plan to restore pay.
Acting TSA chief Ha McNeill said some officers have resorted to sleeping in their cars to save money on gas, selling blood and taking second jobs to make ends meet.
Democrats — the minority party in both chambers — have used their leverage to block full DHS funding in response to recent actions by federal agents, including the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. They are pressing to curb what they describe as aggressive immigration-enforcement tactics by the Trump administration, which the article says have led to more than half a million deportations and stirred unrest in some cities.
ICE and Border Patrol, however, can rely on separate funding sources provided in a broad tax-and-spending bill Republicans passed last year. Republicans suggested they might pursue additional, targeted funding for those agencies through a procedural route designed to circumvent Democratic opposition, but intra-party unity on that approach is uncertain in an election year.
Democrats, shut out of majority power, previously forced two government funding lapses in the past six months; those actions did not secure their goals, including an unsuccessful effort last November to extend expiring health subsidies. The current standoff likewise concluded without an agreement on immigration-enforcement changes.
The administration has, for now, pulled back from some confrontational measures that spurred mass protests in cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago. Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem this month; her successor, former Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin, has signaled openness to certain Democratic proposals, like limiting agents’ ability to enter homes without a judicial warrant. Other Democratic requests appear unlikely to advance — Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, called the demand that agents operate without masks a ‘‘nonstarter.’’
