Unpaid TSA workers face 'exhausting anxiety' during shutdown

DENVER − Day after day, flight after flight: Cancun. Orlando. Honolulu. Happy families and college students heading off on spring break vacations are being helped every day by 61,000 unpaid TSA workers.

The screeners reminding travelers to remove liquids from their carry-ons? Unpaid.

Those scanning suitcases for guns and knives? Unpaid.

Those comparing IDs to prevent terrorists from boarding? Unpaid.

"We're basically invisible, and we can't let you see that our guard is down," said Angela Grana, the Colorado-based regional vice president of the union representing TSA workers at 38 airports across the Rockies. "But we are desperate. The anxiety is exhausting."

Across the country, the partial government shutdown means TSA workers are going unpaid. For travelers, it has meant longer lines at busy airports as some TSA workers call in sick or quit. Some travelers have seen delays of more than four hours; others have reported missing flights because shorthanded screening has taken so long.

President Donald Trump on March 23 deployed an undetermined number of ICE officers to several major airports in an effort to assist with security.

For the TSA employees themselves, the pressure has been ratcheting up for weeks − months if you count the shutdown before this one. Some airports, including Denver International, have set up donation stations where travelers can give TSA employees grocery and gas gift cards, and the World Central Kitchen has established distribution sites in the Greater Baltimore-Washington and Houston areas to provide free meals.

Grana said it's a tough thing for the men and women of the Transportation Security Administration to swallow their pride and accept help from the traveling public, but many agents are still digging out from the partial paychecks they got in February during the last shutdown. She said some workers have been living off maxed-out credit cards or have borrowed money from friends and family.

"We're drowning in debt, and now you ask us to do it again," she said. "This is so un-American. We are living paycheck to paycheck already as some of the worst-paid federal employees. We're nobodies with the biggest responsibility."

Grana said some employees had been sleeping in their cars at airports because they can't afford the gas to commute, but increasingly they're just sleeping inside terminals to keep cool. She said it's insulting to TSA workers to watch ICE officers − who are getting paid and paid better − deployed at airports without actually contributing.

Another union representative said things have gone beyond desperate for some TSA employees. “They’re beginning to literally starve because they do not have the financial means to provide food for their families," Mac Johnson, the American Federation of Government Employees’ second vice president for Council 100, said at an online news conference March 24 to urge congressional compromise.

Union president Everett Kelley said at the news conference that “right now, these workers need a vote, a signature and a paycheck."

In the TSA, which was created after 9/11, screeners took over work that had been largely performed by private contractors. Today, they are part of the Department of Homeland Security, which also conducts immigration enforcement, leads disaster response via FEMA, and oversees the Coast Guard.

Grana said many TSA agents served in the military, and they take to heart their mission to protect the traveling public. The agency is supposed to be funded by fees travelers pay, but Congress has halted funding for the agency during a partisan fight in part over whether ICE agents should be barred from wearing anonymizing masks when conducting immigration enforcement. Few of the ICE officers sent to airports are wearing masks.

Trump fired Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, in early March, and replacement Markwayne Mullin was sworn in March 24.

"My first priority is to end the partisan fighting and reopen the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a matter of national security," Mullin said after taking office.

At Denver International Airport, arriving passenger Tricia Hernandez, 27, said she had been pleasantly surprised at how smooth her security experience was flying out of California.

A part-time server and college student, she expressed solidarity with TSA workers.

“I was shocked at the camaraderie and community,” Hernandez said. “They are doing God's work.”

Hernandez said she hopes the government shutdown gets resolved soon and workers start getting paid again, and she marveled at how cheerful TSA screeners were: “I would probably not have such a good attitude.”