As TSA staffing crisis deepens, Philadelphia International Airport lines get worse

Facing an army of anxious travelers waiting to be screened at Philadelphia International Airport’s Terminal E last Friday afternoon, one security checkpoint worker – who declined to be named – embodied the current weariness and frustration of federal airport workers.

“I’m tired,” he allowed, and it wasn’t hard to see why. An employee of the Transportation Security Administration, he’d been on his feet manning the checkpoint since 3:30 a.m., some 11 hours earlier, working overtime to cover for colleagues who’d called out sick.

More and more of the airport’s roughly 800 TSA workers – the exact number was not available – have absented themselves as the partial federal government shutdown stretches into its sixth week, freezing paychecks for the TSA and many other employees of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The result is that as travel enters one of its busiest periods of the year – spring break – the thinning ranks of personnel are straining major airports like Philadelphia, the nation’s 21st-busiest, to the breaking point. 

The crisis is heightened by the elevated security threat posed by America’s ongoing war in Iran – “It’s the perfect storm right now,” observed Joe Shuker, the regional vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing Philadelphia’s TSA workers. The union is calling for those employees to be paid so that they can afford to return to work – many are calling out sick to earn money at odd jobs – alongside their colleagues in air traffic control, who, as Department of Transportation employees, are unaffected by the shutdown. 

Without a resolution, the impasse “is going to lead to some kind of disaster,” Shuker opined. “You’ve had to wait for an hour and a half, and nobody in this giant airport lobby with 1,000 or so people has been screened yet … Why isn’t somebody saying how dangerous that line is? Do you want to get on a plane where your X-ray operator, the one checking for guns and IEDs (improvised explosive devices), slept in his car last night because the agency isn’t paying them?”

Indeed, the stakes are high not only for travelers, but also for congressional Democrats – who have conditioned the resumption of DHS funding on reforms to the department’s controversial immigration-enforcement practices – and for congressional Republicans, whose federal administration is ultimately responsible for securing the nation’s transportation system.

Pennsylvania legislators from both parties have been trading online accusations over who was to blame for airport chaos.“Democrats have repeatedly offered to fund TSA and the rest of DHS while Congress negotiates reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. Republicans have refused,” wrote U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat whose Southeastern Pennsylvania district includes Philadelphia International Airport, in a March 19 post on X. “Last week, I forced a vote in the Rules Committee to fund DHS, except for ICE. Every Republican in the Rules Committee voted to block it.”The same day, Republican U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick cast the blame at the feet of Democrats: “PHL is paying the price for the Democrats’ DHS shutdown,” he posted on X, using the acronym for Philadelphia International Airport. “Pennsylvanians are paying for Washington’s political games.”The next day, McCormick turned his attention to Pittsburgh International Airport, responding to a post about a food bank set up there to feed the families of TSA and other federal employees. “The heroic men and women who protect our homeland are going without a paycheck because Democrats are refusing to fund DHS,” he wrote.

On Sunday, White House border czar Tom Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the federal government would deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to U.S. airports to bolster security efforts – monitoring exits, for instance, to allow TSA personnel to focus on screening passengers.

“We will be at airports tomorrow, helping TSA move those lines along,” Homan said. In a March 21 post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump vowed the ICE agents would “do security like no one has ever seen before.”

For now, the burden of shepherding some 83,000 daily travelers through PHL rests on the shoulders of employees like that weary TSA worker. 

“It’ll go faster if everybody remembers to take your ID out of your wallet,” he calls out every few minutes, in between answering an unceasing stream of near-identical questions: Am I in the right place? Is this the line for PreCheck? Do you need my boarding pass?

The crowds were thick on Friday afternoon, but nothing like the pandemonium that greeted the worker when he arrived hours before sunrise. “You should’ve seen it at 3:30 a.m. – the lines were all the way down the escalators, wrapping around the baggage claim and back,” said a city-employed airport worker who gave only her first name, Benet. 

By far the state’s largest airport by volume, PHL is suffering more than its regional counterparts across the commonwealth – especially during the morning rush, since the airport’s domestic flight schedule is front-loaded with early-morning departures. (A spokesperson for the airport declined to comment for this story.)

In contrast, the Lehigh Valley and Harrisburg airports have low callout rates, and along with Pittsburgh International, have reported minimal delays. But these airports are far smaller: Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest, handles less than one-third of PHL’s annual volume of 30 million passengers.

Nationally, the DHS funding shutdown has affected airports to varying degrees, with some reporting recent TSA callout rates of nearly 40%; Houston’s rates topped 50% for several days in mid-March, according to the DHS. Since the shutdown began on Jan. 1, callout rates nationally have been more than triple the norm, around 6%, rising to roughly 10% in recent days.

“Americans are still facing HOURS long waits at airports across the country,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson told City & State via email on Friday. “Many TSA officers cannot pay their rent, buy food, or afford to put gas in their cars – forcing them to call out sick from work. They are struggling and being used as political pawns. Democrats must reopen DHS now.” 

Lauren Bis, the department’s acting assistant secretary, said in a statement that TSA workers were bearing the brunt of repeated government shutdowns over the past year, including a six-week shutdown in October and early November. Employee morale has taken a hit, as evidenced by nearly 400 TSA agents across the nation quitting their jobs since the current shutdown began.

On Friday, Shuker told City & State that he wasn’t optimistic about a resolution anytime soon. A weekly national union leaders’ call on March 19 with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, “wasn’t coming across like she thought something was going to be agreed to,” said Shuker, who until December was the longtime president of AFGE’s Philadelphia Local 333. “It didn’t sound promising.”

Meanwhile, the situation at Philadelphia International is fast becoming untenable. “With the line the way it is for spring break, our guys are having to work overtime,” he said. “And then they’re going out and doing another job in order to get money to feed their kids … they’re driving for Uber, they’re doing gig jobs – so they can keep coming to work to a place that’s not paying them.”