Airports across the country felt the pinch Tuesday after 2,700 Transportation Security Agency officers, equal to 10 percent of the workforce, didn’t show up.
“Atlanta and New Orleans saw the biggest impacts … with nearly 40 percent of officers calling out in each airport,” according to a report by ABC News.
New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport saw 30 percent of its agents call out, while nearly 41 percent of officers at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport called in sick.
Normally, only about 2 percent of officers are absent on a typical day, the network reported.
The absences coincided with TSA employees receiving their first $0 paycheck due to the partial government shutdown in an ongoing partisan battle in Washington, D.C., over the Department of Homeland Security.
Staff shortages were already causing delays, but now things appear to be getting worse.
Acting Deputy Administrator Adam Stahl told ABC that smaller airports might be forced to close security lanes and could even halt operations entirely if these trends continue.
“Over a hundred airports in the United States have around one or two lanes,” he said. “And if we have a certain amount of callouts increase, we might have to quite literally collapse those lanes and close those lanes, which could temporarily halt operations at that airport.”
A DHS spokesperson placed the blame squarely on congressional Democrats for continually causing government shutdowns and holding federal money hostage.
“The Democrats’ reckless DHS shutdown is causing TSA officers to go without pay for the third time in nearly six months,” the agency said in a statement to ABC News.
It continued, “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. Now, Americans are facing HOURS long waits at airports across the country. Democrats must reopen DHS now.”
President Donald Trump has also blamed Democratic lawmakers for recent travel issues on social media this past week.
“The crazed Democrats are not allowing TSA Agents to get paid. The deal was made a long time ago,” he wrote Monday on Truth Social. “They broke it in order to get money for Sanctuary Cities and illegal aliens, many of them hardened criminals. The Radical Left Democrats are hopeless!!!”
In a separate post Wednesday, the commander in chief added, “The [Democrats’] purposeful DHS SHUTDOWN is causing chaos at the airports. These Lunatics are being totally unreasonable in their Radical Left asks. They are FULLY TO BLAME, and must pay a big price, for the good of our Country, in the Midterm Elections.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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