The ongoing partial government shutdown has led to long security lines at airports across the country, but no airport has felt the effects as acutely as George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
On Thursday, wait times at Bush, one of the nation’s busiest airports, reached four hours or more, with lines extending outside its terminals. Passenger volume at Bush is expected to get worse this weekend, driven by major events in Houston, including the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament.
The lines are a result of many Transportation Security Administration officers — who aren’t getting paid during the shutdown — not coming to work.
As airline passengers waited in long lines and congressional negotiators appeared far from a deal to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an emergency order directing the department, which oversees TSA, to pay TSA officers immediately using existing funds.
Early Friday morning, the U.S. Senate voted to fund most of the department, except Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but House Republican leadership widely panned the Senate proposal.
Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for the Houston airports, said in a video statement that Bush typically has 37 TSA checkpoint lanes, but fewer than half are currently operational due to staffing shortages.
“I see the frustration in the eyes of airport employees who are normally working hard to deliver world-class experiences, only to be put in this difficult position through no fault of their own,” Szczesniak said in the video posted Tuesday. “And we see the TSA officers who continue to show up day in and day out doing their jobs without a paycheck.”
“We’ve reassigned hundreds of employees from across our organization, from finance to IT to maintenance and more, to help manage lines and assist travelers,” Szczesniak added.
Thursday marked the 41st day since Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed; TSA officers will soon miss their second full paycheck, increasing the strain on the agency’s officers, said Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ Local 100 chapter, which represents TSA officers.
“People simply don’t have money. We are still recovering from the [2025] shutdown. You are asking people to go into debt to go to work and not get paid,” Jones said.
The wait times at Bush stand in contrast to those at the William P. Hobby Airport, the smaller airport located just 30 miles south of Bush and a major hub for Southwest Airlines. Wait times this week have been significantly shorter for travelers flying out of Hobby.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire told The New York Times on Tuesday that Hobby’s security line was so much shorter than Bush’s because an additional 50 officers assigned to Houston by the TSA’s National Deployment Office were disproportionately assigned to Hobby by mistake.
Whitmire’s office on Thursday said even more officers deployed by TSA to Houston are expected to assist with security screenings at IAH starting Friday.
“It’s frustrating to me that it’s in our city and it can’t be resolved, because it’s not rocket science,” Whitmire wrote in a statement. “Let these people be paid. They’re essential workers.”
A host of other agencies and companies are calling on Congress to take action along with Whitmire. Houston First, the city’s marketing corporation, all of the major U.S. airlines, local politicians and other have implored action by Washington in recent days.
A spokesperson for the Council 100 of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA workers nationwide, told NBC News earlier this week that the average rate of agents who don’t come to work at Houston airports ranges between 35% to 40%, much higher than the 11% national average.
On March 19, AFGE President Everett Kelly issued a statement saying that large numbers of TSA officers are calling out sick at various airports because they can’t afford to work without pay, while hundreds have been forced to quit their jobs altogether.
“They don’t have money for daycare, childcare, gas, food, and many other things as they’ve almost gone a full month without a full paycheck, because the last paycheck they received was so small it was almost inconsequential,” he wrote in the statement.
Kelly said TSA agents are being forced to sleep at airports or in their cars because they can’t afford the commute to and from work, while others can’t afford to pay rent.
The chaos at IAH comes as members of Congress prepare to take a two-week recess beginning tomorrow.
Most of the negotiations to end the shutdown are taking place in the U.S. Senate, where a 60-vote threshold must be cleared to move any funding bill for TSA, requiring bipartisan consensus.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA, lapsed on Feb. 14 after the killing of two U.S. citizens by ICE agents prompted Democrats to block the bill and demand reforms within ICE.
For weeks, Senate negotiators have debated those reforms and appeared close to a deal to fund all DHS agencies — except for ICE, which would be negotiated separately — at the start of this week.
But negotiations were thrown into chaos when Trump demanded that his election reform bill be tied to the DHS funding bill. Trump also called on Senate Republicans to vote to get rid of the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold to move bills in the Senate, in order to pass both the DHS funding bill and his elections reform bill.
Democrats are roundly opposed to Trump’s election reform proposal as well as ending the filibuster, which would allow Senate Republicans to approve bills without any Democratic support.
Trump on Monday deployed ICE agents to airports across the country, including Bush, saying the agents would supplement TSA operations. Wait times have not shortened at Bush since the ICE deployment began.
Jones believes the idea of putting ICE agents at TSA checkpoints won’t provide relief but actually makes the situation worse, as their presence alone may upset passengers, and they lack the training to work in airports.
“I wouldn’t want to be an ICE officer at a checkpoint. That is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s like trying to put a football player into basketball,” he said. “They all play sports, just not the same one.”
Houston area members of Congress reached by The Texas Tribune on Thursday largely blamed their political foes for the chaos seen at Bush.
U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, said he believes Trump’s primary focus is pressuring Senate Republicans to vote to get rid of the filibuster.
“He already has control of the House. The House will do whatever he asks,” Green said. “It’s the Senate where he needs 60 votes and he needs to have Democrats. If we decided we would vote for (a funding deal), he would add something else to it because he keeps moving the goal posts.”
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, placed the blame squarely on Trump for injecting himself into Senate negotiations.
“There is bipartisan support to fund the rest of DHS while negotiations on ICE continue, but Donald Trump rejected that path and is choosing to keep this shutdown going,” Garcia wrote in a statement Thursday. “The chaos we are seeing at airports could end today.”
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, called on the Senate to act, noting the House for the third time voted on a bill that would have funded TSA on Thursday. Hunt defended the ICE operations at the heart of the funding dispute.
“Democrats are holding our nation’s airports hostage to protect the very criminals who prey on innocent Americans,” Hunt wrote.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and a Houston resident, used social media to tell travelers waiting in line this week to “thank a Democrat” for the delays.
Jones said many TSA agents feel caught in the middle of a partisan fight over ICE, an agency now being used to replace them at airport checkpoints.
“There is a lot of grandstanding going on top of the backs of TSA officers,” he said. “We are being used as political pawns for ICE, and now they are at our checkpoints? It doesn’t make us happy.”
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