Missed paychecks and airport delays: Pressure mounts on Congress to end the funding shutdown
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressure is mounting on Congress to end the funding shutdown that has resulted in travel disruptions, missed paychecks and even warnings of airport closures, but lawmakers have yet to resolve the underlying issue of reining in President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement operations.
Senators intend to vote Thursday on a Republican proposal that would fund the Transportation Security Administration and much of the Department of Homeland Security, except the enforcement and removal operations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That vote is expected to fail.
Democrats argue it does not go far enough at putting guardrails on officers from ICE, Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies who are engaged in the immigration sweeps, particularly after the deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis.
Trump, who has largely left the issue to Congress to resolve, threatened to send the National Guard to airports, in addition his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers IDs — a development drawing concerns.
“They need to end this shutdown immediately or we'll have to take drastic measures,” Trump said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
With Congress set to leave town by week’s end for its own spring break recess, calls are intensifying for an end to the 41-day stalemate that’s put the livelihoods of TSA officers at risk as they provide airport security without pay.
Multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers and nearly 500 of its nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have now quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Wednesday, more than 11% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,120 callouts.
At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston some travelers reported missing flights after spending hours in security lines.
Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting than 2½ hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.
“I should have just driven, right?” Gates said of her 260-mile (418-kilometer) trip. “Five hours would have been hilarious next to this.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune. R-S.D., said Thursday he had given “our last final offer” to the Democrats.
“Enough is enough," he said. “Democrats need to get serious about funding the Department of Homeland Security.”
Thune did not disclose details of the new offer but that it picked up what had been the Republicans' one over the weekend, before talks with the White House and Democrats had broken off.
“Hopefully ... there will be some finality in this real soon,” Thune said.
Earlier this week, the GOP offer added a new restraint on immigration officers, funding the use of body cameras that had previously been agreed to. It excluded other policies that Democrats have demanded, such as that federal agents wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said they needed to see real changes. “We’ve been talking about ICE reforms from day one,” he said.
Before earlier negotiations broke down, talks with the White House, including with border czar Tom Homan, appeared to be making progress toward a deal. The White House had presented its own offer with several items Democrats had been demanding, including officer IDs and training.
Any deal will almost certainly need to involved a compromise as lawmakers on the left and right flanks revolt. Conservative Republicans have panned their own GOP proposals, demanding full funding for immigration operations and skeptical of the promise from leaders that they would address Trump’s proof-of-citizenship voting bill in a subsequent legislative package.
The Republican president initially signed off on the earlier plan the GOP senators brought to him late Monday. By Tuesday, he said he would not be happy with any deal.
Trump did not directly address the status of negotiations late Wednesday evening during an annual fundraising dinner for the House Republicans’ campaign committee as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., works to keep majority control of the chamber in the November elections.
But Trump criticized Democrats for refusing to settle their demands on immigration changes. On Thursday, he revived his campaign for senators to end the filibuster as a way to overpower opposition to GOP policies, something most Republican senators do not want to do.
The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the money is flowing for his immigration and deportation agenda even with the funding shutdown. ICE and other immigration officers are still being paid.
The situation is partly of Trump’s making, a strategy the president put in place last fall when he cut a deal with Democrats to end a previous federal shutdown. At that time, Trump agreed to fund the federal government, except for DHS, which was then put on temporary funding that has expired.
Republicans say the Trump administration has already made strides to meet Democrats’ demands and has shown a new approach to its immigration operations, swearing in Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the new homeland security secretary to replace Kristi Noem.
Passengers are facing more four-hour waits to clear security at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
Lines and wait times are expected to grow Thursday and Friday because of “significantly higher passenger traffic,” according to an update on the airport’s website.
“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, testified at a House hearing Wednesday.
She described the multiple hardships facing unpaid TSA workers — piling up bills and eviction notices, even plasma donations to make ends meet — and warned of potential airport closures if more employees refuse to come to work.
“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table,” she said. “And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”
McNeil also said TSA officers working at the nation’s airports have experienced a more than 500% increase in the frequency of assaults since the shutdown began.
“This is unacceptable, and it will not be tolerated,” McNeill said.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Rebecca Santana and Ben Finley in Washington, Lekan Oyekanmi in Houston, Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego contributed to this report.
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