TSA officers are approaching their second consecutive missed full paycheck, and union leaders say their members are no longer just struggling. They are starving.
Officials from the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 44,000 TSA officers nationwide, held a virtual press conference Tuesday to demand that Congress resolve the partial government shutdown that began February 14. The funding lapse has created a cascading crisis inside the nation’s airports, where security lines have stretched for hours and over 400 TSA workers have already quit their jobs.
Mac Johnson, who represents TSA workers across North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, described members who can no longer afford groceries, rent, auto insurance, or other basic necessities. Some have resorted to selling plasma to generate income.
“It’s not that these employees, their families, are hungry,” Johnson said at the press conference. “They’re beginning to starve, literally starve, because they do not have the funds to provide food for their families. So we not only strongly encourage, we demand that the Congress and this administration sit down like adults and resolve this matter so these employees won’t be placing themselves between a rock and a hard place.”
AFGE President Everett Kelly made clear that vague congressional optimism no longer satisfies workers waiting for a paycheck.
“We’ve been hearing about optimism and progress for weeks,” Kelly said. “Our members cannot eat optimism or pay rent with progress.”
The shutdown stems from a standoff between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement. Following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, along with other incidents tied to the administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, Democrats demanded changes to immigration enforcement policy before agreeing to fund the Department of Homeland Security. TSA falls under DHS, as does most federal immigration enforcement infrastructure.
Some senators have signaled in recent days that a deal to fund TSA separately from immigration enforcement functions could be within reach. But union officials stressed that partial solutions and near-deals are not enough. Workers need to be paid now.
The staffing shortage is already visibly affecting airports. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport warned travelers Monday to expect wait times of at least four hours at security checkpoints. Federal immigration officers were deployed to the Atlanta airport that same day to help fill gaps left by absent TSA staff.
Even after Congress reaches a funding agreement and the shutdown ends, the financial pain for workers will not immediately stop. Aaron Barker, president of the union covering Georgia airports, and Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the nationwide AFGE chapter for TSA workers, said it could take two weeks to a month before employees receive their back pay. During that window, many will continue missing shifts to pursue gig work or other ways to generate quick income, potentially delaying any return to normal staffing levels at airports across the country.
That timeline matters beyond the workers themselves. Every day that security lines stretch into the hours is a day that travelers face delays, airlines face disruptions, and the broader argument for a functional federal workforce takes another hit. The people being asked to continue working without pay are the same people responsible for screening millions of travelers each week. More than 400 of them have already decided it is not worth it.
The political dispute at the center of this crisis is real. The consequences of the two Minneapolis shootings were serious, and Democratic demands for accountability on immigration enforcement are not without basis. But the workers caught in the middle of that standoff, the ones selling plasma and skipping shifts to drive for rideshare apps, did not design federal immigration policy and have no power to change it.
Congress has continued to collect paychecks throughout this shutdown. TSA officers have not.
