The immediate impact: travellers waiting in long lines at some of the United States’ busiest airports, which in turn affected the facilities’ overall operations. The Donald Trump administration had to deploy federal agents from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for airport security-related duties, despite the individuals lacking relevant training for the task.

Call-out rates (the ratio that deals with the absence of TSA staff from their airport duties), by the middle of March, reportedly increased to 10%, as the employees just couldn’t deal with the fact that they were working without salaries for the second time in six months.

The first crisis hit them during October-November 2025, due to the political flashpoint between Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress over budget negotiations.

The situation reminded Americans of a similar crisis in 2018-19, when over 50,000 TSA officers had to work without pay, leading to high absenteeism (near 10%), long airport security lines, and over 300 employee resignations. However, this time the problem has been much larger in nature.

Talking about TSA call-outs, major airports like New York, Atlanta, and Houston have seen staff absence of nearly 30% or higher. The visuals of travellers standing in long queues across the airports went viral, with many of them taking the social media route to allege that even after reaching airports well in advance to catch their flights, they ended up missing their journeys.

Trump Intervenes To Ensure Paycheques For TSA Employees

Just how bad was the situation? In the last week of March, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that some 74 small American airports faced a shutdown scenario due to factors like staff shortages and TSA mass call-outs. The regional network of the US aviation sector faced a catastrophic situation. Also came out another shocking stat: assaults on these unpaid TSA workers (by frustrated flyers) increased by around 500%, since the start of the partial government shutdown on February 14.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), tasked with overseeing the TSA, has been unfunded since February 2026, after Congress failed to reach a budget agreement. Democrats have reportedly refused to agree on a funding deal without reforms to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, triggering the partial shutdown.

Under the established protocols, TSA agents, considered essential workers, must work without immediate pay during a federal shutdown, as their salaries depend on congressional appropriations, which are, in turn, tied to a funding agreement in the DHS budget.

On March 27, Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum, instructing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to pay TSA agents using existing funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations. Since then, things have improved, as TSA staff have started receiving their salaries.

Latest details (as of April 6) show that Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and New York’s LaGuardia Airport have security wait times of 10 minutes or less. John F. Kennedy International Airport was reporting wait times of roughly 30 minutes at four of its terminals. However, the TSA staff call-out ratio is still hovering above 20% in some places.

White House Proposal

Now comes the big news. The Trump administration is proposing to slash over 9,400 TSA workers and a little over $1.5 billion from the agency. It is already in the federal budget document. In April, Congress will likely conduct hearings on the White House budget request, in an attempt to ensure that the new budget deal gets concluded before ⁠September 30.

White House’s solution is radical: privatise airport security screenings by 2027. Some airports use a TSA partner screening programme, which helps manage lines at smaller airports while ensuring employees are paid on time. The proposal will also reduce the organisation’s nearly $8 billion budget by roughly 20% amid the agency losing over 1,600 workers during the federal government ⁠funding disruptions in 2025 and 2026.

Stalemate In Congress

However, the political duel continues. The stalemate in Congress will continue, as Democrats want a government restraint on immigration agencies. The high-profile deaths of American citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti during a Minnesota crackdown by federal agents raised questions about alleged high-handedness by the Trump administration during anti-immigration drives.

In November 2025, both Republicans and Democrats agreed to negotiate DHS funding ’at a later date’ to ward off the government shutdown. However, things haven’t progressed at all since then, and with TSA funding lapsing on February 14, all hell broke loose. Several bills put forward by Democrats to fund TSA while a larger deal on DHS is worked out have failed to pass. However, neither Republicans nor Democrats are ready to take the blame.

Post Trump’s executive order, TSA workers are finally getting paid. The hours-long passenger queues at security lines are easing up as well. However, there is no guarantee that something similar won’t be repeated.

According to Chris Edwards, Kilts Family Chair in Fiscal Studies, Cato Institute and Editor of DownsizingGovernment.org, security screening at American airports needs to be privatised. Screening operations need to be contracted out to private security agencies while shrinking the government’s role to regulatory oversight and intelligence.

The Arguments For Privatisation

While Edwards’ solution aligns with White House’s proposals and sounds radical, he cited the Canadian example, where the federal aviation authority provides contracts to security firms for five years, apart from periodically reviewing their performances. The system ensures that 95% of travellers get screened within 15 minutes. A similar method has been implemented in Europe as well, where about four-fifths of airports use private screening.

“In the United States, the TSA took over screening at 430 commercial airports over the past two-and-a-half decades since 9/11. It hasn’t been a glorious run. TSA has misallocated resources, delivered mediocre (at best) security evaluations, and wasted vast amounts of traveller time in queues. And it has long scored near the bottom of all federal agencies in annual rankings of best places to work. Thankfully, the 2001 bill creating the TSA allowed for some private airport screening in the Screening Partnership Programme (SPP). As part of SPP, San Francisco International and 19 smaller airports have been using private screening firms for years, and with good results,” Edwards said.

While claiming that an ’undercover test’ conducted in 2015 found a 95% failure rate for TSA, in terms of identifying banned items, Edwards said that another similar experiment found a failure rate of 80%. He also said that TSA has a conflict of interest, as it both performs screening and sets the standards, in terms of conducting screening and judging its own performance.

“By contrast, in the Canadian and European systems, the government authority sets the standards and can objectively judge the performance of private screeners at the various airports. Also, as a near monopoly, TSA has little incentive to improve efficiency or to innovate. But under a privatised system, companies would compete on their records to win contracts at airports, and they could draw on their broad international experience to continuously improve their operations,” Edwards commented.

On the other hand, the US Travel Association wants Congress to provide three years of funding for the TSA to help avoid an impact on paycheques. For the association, the onus is on both Republicans and Democrats to put their differences aside and fix the overall mess through reconciliation.

So, we have two schools of thought: one advocating privatisation, axing workers in the process, while the other wants further investment in the human resources. Which side will win? The answer can be expected after September 30, when the new budget deal is concluded.

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