If you flew anywhere between late February and early April this year, you already know the pain. Four-hour security lines. People camped out on terminal floors. Airports literally telling travelers to show up five hours before their flights. It was chaos, and it took weeks for the federal government to step in with emergency cash to get TSA workers paid and lines moving again.
That fix was temporary. The emergency money is almost gone. And the situation that caused the whole mess in the first place hasn’t actually been resolved. So if you’ve got summer travel plans, or you’re thinking about catching a World Cup match, you need to pay attention. Because the longest TSA wait times in the agency’s 24-year history could be coming back.
The Shutdown That Started It All
Here’s the short version. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed on February 14, 2026. That meant the department, which houses the TSA, went into a partial shutdown. The shutdown wasn’t even about airport security. It was a political fight over immigration enforcement, specifically over ICE and CBP policies. Democrats wanted agents to wear personal identification, stop wearing masks during enforcement operations, and get warrants before entering homes or businesses. Republicans had different priorities. Neither side blinked.
But TSA officers got caught in the middle. About 95% of them are classified as essential workers, which means they’re required to keep showing up for work during a shutdown. The catch? They don’t get paid while doing it. You can probably guess what happened next.
Officers Quit, Called Out Sick, or Just Couldn’t Afford to Work
More than 1,000 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began. Another 480 or so left in the early weeks alone. At some airports, callout rates hit 40% to 50%. At Houston Hobby, that number hit 55%. Compare that to the normal callout rate of around 4%.
Johnny Jones, a union leader for TSA officers in Houston, put it bluntly: “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.” That’s the thing people forget. This is the second shutdown to hit TSA workers in less than a year. The 2025 shutdown, which lasted 43 days, caused about 1,110 officers to leave the agency. That was a 25% spike in separations compared to the same period the year before. The workforce was already stretched thin before this round even started.
Houston Was Ground Zero
No airport got hit harder than George Bush Intercontinental in Houston. At peak disruption, wait times exceeded four hours, with lines stretching outside the terminals. The airport normally has 37 TSA checkpoint lanes. Fewer than half were open. That was during a week when the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament was also rolling through town, adding even more bodies to an already overwhelmed system.
Nearby Hobby Airport actually fared a bit better because 50 additional officers got reassigned there. But the fix at one airport meant pulling resources from somewhere else. It was a shell game with no extra shells.
Other major hubs weren’t doing well either. JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson all stopped reporting official wait times because conditions were changing too fast to give accurate numbers. When an airport can’t even tell you how long the line is, that tells you everything.
The Emergency Fix That Bought a Few Weeks
On March 27, President Trump signed an executive order directing DHS to pay TSA employees using existing emergency funds. It worked fast. By the following Monday, wait times dropped as back pay reached workers and officers returned to their posts. That same day, the Senate passed a DHS budget that included Democratic changes.
But the House didn’t agree to it. Speaker Johnson said the Senate version would need to be changed before it could pass the House, which would then send it back to the Senate for another vote. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s response: “They’re just stuck.”
So while the paychecks went out and lines got shorter, nothing was actually fixed. The underlying funding problem stayed right where it was.
The Emergency Money Is Running Out
This is the part that should worry anyone with a plane ticket this summer. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that the department’s payroll runs “just over $1.6 billion every two weeks, so the money is going extremely fast.” The $10 billion emergency fund created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” had only about $1.4 billion left as of April 19. There are no additional emergency funds to tap, meaning the President can’t just sign another order and make it rain.
If Congress doesn’t act, that money could run dry by early May. When that happens, TSA agents start missing paychecks again. And we already know what happens when they miss paychecks. Lines explode. People quit. Airports consider shutting down.
The World Cup Complication
The FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 11. The State Department is expecting up to 10 million international visitors during the tournament. TSA itself is anticipating between 6 million and 10 million additional passengers on top of normal summer traffic. Games are spread across 11 U.S. host cities.
Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told Congress this creates a “perfect storm of staffing shortages.” She pointed out that it takes four to six months to train a new TSA officer to work checkpoints. That means even if funding came through tomorrow and a hiring blitz started immediately, those new officers wouldn’t be ready in time for the World Cup. The damage is already done on the recruiting front.
The U.S. Travel Association has warned that safety concerns have “emerged as a top concern among potential visitors.” In other words, the chaos at American airports could scare off the exact tourists the World Cup is supposed to attract.
Budget Cuts and Privatization on the Horizon
Even beyond the shutdown, there’s a longer-term threat to TSA staffing. The White House released a budget proposal on March 31 that would cut roughly 8,400 TSA positions out of about 61,000. That’s a 14% reduction in the workforce. Among those cuts: 2,462 Transportation Security Officer positions and the elimination of more than 800 posts for staffing exit lanes.
To fill the gaps, the White House wants to expand privatization. Smaller airports would be required to join TSA’s Screening Partnership Program, which contracts private companies to handle security screening. About 20 airports already use this model, and supporters point out that those airports didn’t experience the same delays during the shutdown because private contractors kept paying their employees. The White House estimates this could save about $52 million.
The TSA officers’ union, AFGE, is pushing back hard. They argue privatization leads to high turnover, worse training, and staffing shortages of its own. Annual turnover at TSA already exceeds 20%, and the union says budget cuts would only make that worse.
ICE Agents at the Checkpoint
One of the stranger moments of this entire saga: when wait times peaked in late March, the Trump Administration sent ICE agents to about 14 airports, including Bush Intercontinental, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and JFK. The stated goal was to help with airport security operations.
TSA union leaders were furious. Johnny Jones said officers felt they were being “used as political pawns for ICE.” Immigration enforcement agents aren’t trained to screen luggage or run body scanners. The move felt more like optics than operations, and it did nothing to shorten lines in any meaningful way.
What You Can Actually Do About It
If you’re flying this summer, plan for the worst. Here are a few things that might help:
TSA PreCheck is still operating where staffing allows. During normal operations, roughly 99% of PreCheck passengers wait less than 10 minutes. It costs $85 for five years. The application process normally takes anywhere from three days to two months, so if you haven’t started yet, you’re already behind. Clear, which is privately run, can get you enrolled at kiosks in about 60 airports. A Clear plus PreCheck bundle runs $209 per year, though free trials pop up regularly.
Also, be aware that the MyTSA app is not being updated during the shutdown. Several major airports have also suspended their own wait-time trackers. You might be flying blind in terms of knowing what to expect when you arrive.
Delta Air Lines already started waiving fare differences for passengers flying out of Atlanta on certain days because of security delays. Other airlines may follow if things get bad again.
Congress Has a Deadline and No Plan
Trump set a June 1 deadline for lawmakers to pass an appropriations bill to fund DHS. The House and Senate are also scheduled to take a weeklong recess starting at the end of April, burning more time off the clock. The shutdown has already lasted more than 70 days, making it the longest in American history. TSA has been shut down for roughly 50% of the current fiscal year.
There’s no deal in sight. The emergency money is almost gone. Over a thousand trained officers have walked away. New recruits won’t be ready for months. And millions of extra passengers are about to descend on American airports for the biggest sporting event in the world.
Get to the airport early. Seriously.
