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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will take executive action to pay 50,000 airport security workers as a deal stalled in Congress to address staff shortages that have snarled travel across the country.
Trump said on social media that he was instructing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports. It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!”
He did not say when he would sign the order or where the funding would come from.
Nearly 500 airport security officers have quit since the start of a partial government shutdown in February, the DHS said, as a congressional dispute over the department’s funding forces Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers to work without pay.
It is unclear how long the funding will last or if Trump is tapping funding for the DHS that was approved last year as part of a massive tax and spending bill.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he will deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports across the country after a partial government shutdown created staffing shortages and long lines.
‘Short-term solution’
Senate Majority Leader John Thune called Trump’s move “a short-term solution,” but he did not mention how long the TSA paycheques would last.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, top Democrat on the House of Representatives homeland security committee, said it is not clear how Trump plans to pay TSA officers legally.
Chris Sununu, CEO of airline trade group Airlines for America, praised the solution “to pay tens of thousands of dedicated TSA officers for the important job they do,” but he added that “it’s critical for lawmakers to enact a permanent solution to ensure this chaos never happens again.”
Democrats in Congress have held up funding for the DHS while demanding a change in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January.
Republicans have rejected repeated Democratic proposals to fund the TSA separately while negotiating over reforms for how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operate.
Thune said he still wants to pass legislation funding “everything within DHS,” which includes the coast guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other operations.
“The Democrats have made it very clear they have no interest in funding any of the law enforcement functions” of ICE, Thune said.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the senior Democrat on a homeland security appropriations panel, told reporters that up until Trump’s announcement, “We made progress today…. We’ve been actively talking all day, trading offers all day.”
The TSA reiterated on Wednesday that the agency could be forced to close smaller airports in the United States if staffing issues worsened.
More than 11 per cent of TSA officers, or 3,120 agents, did not show up for work on Wednesday, while much higher absentee rates of 30 per cent or more were seen at New York’s JFK and Houston’s two airports, as well as airports in Baltimore, New Orleans and Atlanta.
The TSA is grappling with a school spring-break travel surge as absences have surged, leading to hours-long delays to get through security checkpoints at some airports.
Hundreds of U.S. immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 U.S. airports on Monday to aid security screening.
Some of those agents are now checking IDs with TSA equipment, guarding entrances and exits, assisting with logistics and engaging in crowd control.
ICE and other law enforcement personnel at the DHS are getting paid during the shutdown.
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