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President Donald Trump’s emergency order to direct Homeland Security to pay Transportation Security Administration officers immediately was intended to relieve long security lines at U.S. airports, but travelers faced continued delays and competing guidance from airports on Sunday. Even as spring break travel picked up and Passover and Easter approached, major airports continued telling passengers to arrive hours early while federal immigration officers brought in to help with screening may remain on the job for some time.
The order, issued after DHS funding for TSA employees lapsed on Valentine’s Day, came as the department’s shutdown reached 44 days on Sunday, surpassing the record 43-day shutdown last fall that affected the rest of the federal government. Trump’s executive order instructed DHS to pay TSA officers immediately, though it was not clear how quickly travelers would see improvements as staffing and operations continued to shift.
White House border czar Tom Homan said the timeline for when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stop helping at airports depends on whether enough TSA employees return after their pay begins. Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Homan said, “ICE is there to help our brothers and sisters in TSA. We’ll be there as long as they need us, until they get back to normal operations and feel like those airports are secure.”
Homan added that the situation also hinges on how many TSA officers have not returned. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he said it depends on how many TSA agents “have actually quit and have no plan on coming back to work,” and DHS statistics cited in the report put the number of TSA officers who had left since the shutdown began at nearly 500.
At least one state official indicated ICE support could expand further during the travel surge. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a post on X on Saturday night that more ICE agents were being deployed to Baltimore-Washington International Airport to assist at TSA security checkpoints in order to “speed up the clearance process for passengers — not immigration enforcement.”
Homan said he hoped TSA officers would start receiving their pay by Monday or Tuesday. “It’s good news because these TSA officers are struggling,” he said, adding, “They can’t feed their families or pay their rent.” The Charlotte Douglas International Airport also told passengers in a post on X that backpay could begin arriving for TSA agents beginning Monday, while the airport said it supports long-term steps to maintain stability for “this essential workforce.”
Still, the TSA union leader said Sunday that many workers remained worried about whether they would get full back pay and whether they could be penalized for time they could not afford to report for duty. Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ TSA chapter, said he heard from workers that TSA management had been given short notice to begin processing payments, and he warned that officers could miss pay for time they were unable to work. “It is a disaster in progress,” Jones said.
On the ground, some of the busiest airports continued to urge passengers to plan ahead for long security lines. Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental warned Sunday evening that TSA wait times could reach four hours or longer, and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport told passengers to arrive at least four hours early for both domestic and international flights. LaGuardia Airport posted an alert Sunday evening saying “TSA lines are currently longer than usual.”
Baltimore-Washington International Airport reported that “wait times have greatly subsided on this Spring Break Sunday,” but still asked passengers to arrive several hours early, and Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans gave similar guidance. The report also said passengers could once again see estimated security wait times at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty, after the three New York-area airports had removed the estimates earlier in the week, citing “rapid” changes in passenger volumes and TSA staffing; they warned that restored wait times might not always reflect current conditions.
Officials and aviation observers said the delayed staffing improvements could take longer than the immediate pay directive suggests. Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter, said the staffing crisis would not improve significantly until officers were confident they would not face “more skipped paychecks,” and he estimated longer lines could last another week or two.
Jones offered a more optimistic view, saying he hoped wait times could ease closer to typical levels once officers could afford basic expenses like gas to get to work. At the same time, airports and TSA would need to adjust screening operations—deciding whether to reopen checkpoints and security lanes they closed or consolidated because of inadequate staffing that left passengers standing in lines that clogged check-in areas or arriving far too early for flights. The report also cited recent call-out rates of 40% or higher at some airports in the days leading up to Sunday.