Acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl warned Thursday that airports across the country may have to suspend operations as mass employee callouts cripple screening checkpoints, and he placed blame squarely on a Congress that has left the Department of Homeland Security unfunded for five straight weeks.
The warning came as more than 5,000 flights nationwide were delayed Thursday alone. That followed 9,000 affected flights on Tuesday and 7,000 on Wednesday. About 50,000 TSA officers have worked without pay since mid-February, and the consequences are now visible at terminals from Houston to Atlanta to New Orleans, the New York Post reported.
Stahl did not mince words about who bears responsibility. He called the standoff "reckless" and accused lawmakers of holding his entire department hostage over policy disagreements, while travelers wait in lines stretching past three hours and frontline officers skip meals to make rent.
The numbers tell a grim story. On Tuesday, 40.8 percent of TSA staffers at Houston's William P. Hobby Airport called out. At Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, nearly 36 percent did the same. At Atlanta's airport, more than 34 percent of staff were absent Tuesday, and that figure climbed to roughly 38 percent.
Passengers at Houston's George Bush International Airport faced three-hour waits just to clear TSA screening, the Houston Chronicle reported. Scores of travelers were photographed standing in lines that snaked through terminal corridors.
Stahl said the situation will only deteriorate, especially at smaller airports with thinner staffing margins:
"And so again, small airports may be particularly impacted because they have fewer lanes and they have fewer people, and so, if a certain three or four out of 10 employees call out, we may, to ensure we're not degrading security, we may have to temporarily suspend operations at those airports."
He would not say how many airports he believed could face shutdowns. But the math is plain. When four out of ten officers don't show up, you either lower your security standards or close the checkpoint. Stahl said TSA will not lower standards.
Cameron Cochems, a TSA union steward and lead officer in Boise, Idaho, described a workforce losing hope. He said officers have no idea when the shutdown will end and no way to plan their finances around a paycheck that isn't coming.
"The morale is getting worse by the day because no one knows when this is gonna end."
Cochems added that travelers are "waiting in line because the government can't do their job and it's ruining people's lives." He's right about the ruined lives, on both sides of the checkpoint. Officers who swore an oath to protect air travel are being asked to do it for free, indefinitely, while Congress plays chicken over immigration enforcement funding.
The Department of Homeland Security itself posted on social media that its "heroic TSA officers are not being paid, and many cannot pay their rent, buy food, or afford to put gas in their cars," as AP News reported. The agency's own statement makes clear this is not a staffing inconvenience. It is a crisis manufactured by legislative gridlock.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian called the situation "inexcusable." That word fits. When the nation's largest airline executives start publicly shaming Washington, the dysfunction has crossed from political theater into real economic damage.
The bleeding isn't limited to callouts. As we previously reported, TSA has lost hundreds of agents who quit outright rather than continue working without pay. Those departures compound the callout crisis, every officer who walks away permanently is one more gap in a screening line that was already short-staffed.
The DHS shutdown exists because Congress cannot agree on how to fund the department. Democrats have put forward bills that would restore funding to certain DHS agencies, but pointedly exclude Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House says that approach would put Americans in danger.
Senate Democrats have now blocked a funding restoration bill for the fourth time. Republicans appear no closer to a compromise. The result is a standoff where Democrats effectively say they'll fund airport security, border patrol, and FEMA, but not the agency that arrests and deports illegal immigrants. The White House and congressional Republicans refuse to let Democrats carve ICE out of the department's budget, viewing it as a poison pill designed to gut immigration enforcement under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
The Washington Times detailed the deadlock at Day 33, noting that acting TSA leadership had already cited Philadelphia's airport as experiencing longer screening times due to worker absences. The pattern was visible well before Thursday's warning from Stahl, and Congress did nothing.
Stahl himself framed the impasse in blunt terms:
"To hold an entire department hostage, particularly over policy concerns, is, frankly, reckless, and it's, I really think it's, it threatens, really the foundational, you know, job of Congress at large to fund the appropriations process, to fund the executive branch."
Strip away the bureaucratic stammering and the point is sharp. Congress has one non-negotiable duty: fund the government. Senate Democrats are refusing to do that unless they can defund the one agency responsible for removing illegal immigrants from the country. Every day they hold that line, 50,000 TSA officers go unpaid, airports inch closer to shutdowns, and the flying public pays the price.
This crisis did not arrive without notice. TSA leadership warned weeks ago that conditions would deteriorate. Hundreds of TSA officers had already quit as lines surged past three hours at major airports. The trajectory was obvious to anyone paying attention.
Stahl told reporters the situation "is going to get worse before it gets better, particularly if we don't have a resolution within the coming days and weeks." That's not a prediction anymore. It's a description of what's already happening, flight delays measured in the thousands, callout rates above 40 percent at some hubs, and a workforce that is demoralized, broke, and shrinking.
The broader security implications extend well beyond airport lines. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has warned that the shutdown is leaving World Cup security preparations unfunded as the United States prepares to host the tournament. The same funding lapse starving TSA is also hobbling the department's ability to plan for one of the largest security events on American soil in years.
And that is the central absurdity. Democrats claim to care about security. They claim to care about federal workers. They claim to care about the traveling public. But they will not fund the Department of Homeland Security unless they can strip out the immigration enforcement arm they find politically inconvenient. Four times they have blocked a bill to restore funding. Four times, TSA officers have watched their bank accounts drain while politicians posture.
There is a word for what Senate Democrats are doing, and Adam Stahl used it: hostage. The TSA workforce is the hostage. The flying public is the hostage. Airport economies in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, and dozens of smaller cities are the hostages. The ransom demand is simple, defund ICE or nobody gets paid.
That is not governing. That is extortion dressed in legislative procedure. And the people absorbing the pain are not senators or lobbyists. They are the TSA officer in Boise who doesn't know when his next paycheck will arrive. They are the family in Houston who stood in line for three hours to catch a flight they'd saved months to afford. They are the small-airport communities that may lose air service entirely if this drags on another week.
When the people who screen your bags and guard your gates can't feed their families, the system isn't failing on its own. Someone broke it on purpose, and they're betting you'll blame the wrong people.
