Three-plus hour wait times at Hobby Airport have thousands of spring break travelers calling for an end to the partial government shutdown that’s prompting TSA employees to quit showing up to work for free.
The situation isn’t likely to get any better when those travelers return from their destinations later this week. While Houston ISD and other surrounding districts are currently on spring break, many area college campuses including Rice and the University of Houston will go on break March 16-20, sending another big wave of travelers to the local airports.
Multi-hour delays, also reported in Georgia and Louisiana, are hitting smaller airports like Hobby harder because they have fewer checkpoints and employees, even when they are fully staffed.
Blasted all over the Houston Airports website are messages that read, “Due to the government shutdown, fewer TSA lanes are open. Arrive early.” Director of Aviation Jim Szczesniak said in a statement that the delays can also be attributed in part to the high volume of spring break travelers. “When more passengers meet fewer security lanes, wait times can grow quickly,” Szczesniak said.
The partial government shutdown began in mid-February, as Republicans and Democrats failed to reach an agreement on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA and ICE.
Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said he traveled about 10 days ago and had no problem getting through the airport, but now that TSA agents have received one partial paycheck and are about to miss a whole one, they’re much less inclined to go to work.
“Some are not showing up to signal their displeasure with not being paid,” he said. “Others are not showing up simply because they can’t afford to show up and not be paid. They have to find other sources of income to pay the rent and pay for food.”
There’s no clear end in sight to the government shutdown, Jones said. But if it were to end, the public pressure created by massive airport delays is exactly the thing that would do it, he said.
“When you have media coverage with more and more delays and more and more frustrated Americans blaming the U.S. Congress, generally from their partisan political lens, that’s when something has to give,” he said. “I suspect it’s going to be the airport lines and delays that will eventually break the logjam. It affects so many people and the optics are so bad for elected officials, for members of Congress.”
It’s clear which side of the aisle President Donald Trump’s DHS supports. The federal agency posted from its official social media account on Monday: “For the THIRD time in nearly six months, our hardworking TSA officers are being forced by the Democrats to work without pay. Our TSA officers and their families are struggling to make ends meet because of the Democrats’ political stunts. Re-open DHS NOW.”
The difficult part for Democrats is that if they fund TSA, which falls under the purview of Homeland Security, they’ll also be funding ICE — and they’ve said they’re not budging until their Republican counterparts agree to reforming immigration policies. Throughout the standoff, more than 1 million federal employees and contractors will have to work without pay or face furloughs.
“At a certain point, Republicans need to give Democrats something they want related to body cameras and detention and masks, and Democrats effectively need to allow ICE to be funded,” Jones said. “At the end of the day, they aren’t going to be able to block all funding from ICE because in and of itself, ICE is not as adversely affected by the shutdown as TSA because of its alternative revenue stream from the Big Beautiful Bill.”
The Trump administration appears to be hyperfocused on the conflict in Iran right now, so “this has fallen somewhat to the back burner, at least in terms of administration priorities, and Democrats, given the Iran crisis, are in less of a mood to negotiate,” Jones added.
The spring break airport delays became a crisis of its own, but Jones said people can better prepare now that they know they need to arrive at the airport, in some cases, up to four hours early.
“On the first day, it caught a lot of people off guard,” he said. “They weren’t aware that they needed to get there four hours early to catch their flights. On Sunday and Monday, more people became aware that they needed to get there early.”
Houston Airports reported that the number of operational TSA screening lanes can vary from airport to airport and shift to shift, depending on how many agents show up to work. Travelers are encouraged to check with the airport beforehand for estimated security wait times. Global Entry, TSA pre-check and CLEAR lanes are operational. It appeared that the long lines at Hobby, marked by red balloons, were for domestic travelers with no special pre-paid clearance.
Those who miss their flights are urged to contact the airline for rebooking. Southwest Airlines briefly delayed some flights Monday morning to allow for passengers who were stuck in the security line.