Travelers are moving through agonizing long lines at security checkpoints in major airports across the country, as the funding negotiations for the Department of Homeland Security continue in Washington.
Some TSA agents at major airports such as Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport have suspended updating wait time estimates due to staff shortage and inaccurate estimates.
Among airports that still report wait time, Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport reported the worst wait times for more than four hours. In response to the unusual wait time, Bush Airport shut down CLEAR and TSA PreCheck lines to prioritize regular security lines. The situation at Bush Airport came as both it and William P. Hobby Airport in Houston reported the highest TSA personnel call-out rates of more than 40% over the weekend, ABC News reported.
Travelers describe chaos and missed flights
Hadi Rahman, a web designer who’s based in Houston, said he arrived at the Bush Airport five hours early on Monday for a flight at 8 p.m. and was met with a long line with no end in sight as soon as he got out of the car. Before he made his way to the airport, he saw online that the line for security started two levels below the floor where security screening happens.
“When I got dropped off, a worker told me, ‘Hey, just get in line.’ I told him, ‘Hey, I need to get to the back of the line.’ The worker told me ‘no, just jump in line. We don't have time for you to go back,’” Rahman said, adding that he was then put in the middle of the line. People who stood in front and behind him said they had been in line for four to five hours. He said as a regular traveler from that airport, the situation was “the worst it’s ever been.”
Rahman is one of the lucky passengers who eventually made it to his flight. Others like Lah-Tish Gilmore have missed their flights in Houston due to longer-than-usual security lines. A traveler from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., she and her 14-year-old son and 4-year-old granddaughter arrived at the airport at 2:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday to catch a flight at 6 a.m. and still missed it. She said it took the entire family 30 minutes to walk from the departure entrance to the end of the line.
Gilmore said that while they were in line, she got an email from her airline, Frontier, saying their terminal was changed. “I just broke down and cried, because I was like, there’s no way we’re making it to the other line over there,” she said. Gilmore later rebooked the next available flight at 9 p.m., which left her family trapped at the airport for the rest of the day after getting past the security gate.
Sophia Pappas, a traveler who flew from Auckland, New Zealand to Tampa with a layover in Houston, said she also missed her connecting flight on Monday night after a 12-hour flight. When asking the airline staff for advice, she and her friends were told to arrive at the airport eight hours early for their 6:25 p.m. flight.
“So that's what we did. We got back to the airport at 10 a.m,” Pappas said, while adding that the underground tunnel where the line starts was hot and has no bathroom, restaurant, or water fountain in sight. Eventually she made it past the gate after waiting for around two and half hours.
Staffing shortages raise safety concerns
The staff shortage also raised security concerns, Rebecca Wolf, president of AFGE TSA Local 1127, which represents TSA agents in six states of the Midwest, warned that the partial government shutdown is driving experienced agents away from their jobs.
“With every person we're losing, we're losing experience, because it takes a long time to build those catalogs in your brain for the X-ray and build the other just the normal things that we learn on the job, and develop those things. And so with every person we lose and all that experience, it’s a scary thing, ” Wolf said.
While the Trump administration assured the public that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will help TSA address the long lines at airports nationwide and ensure overall safety, all three passengers who were interviewed by TIME said that they didn’t see ICE agents provide any useful guidance to help reduce the wait time at the airport.
“They were just chatting with each other, which I thought was interesting because I don’t really feel like it was helping the situation,” Pappas said.
Democratic lawmakers have similarly criticized Trump’s plan to deploy ICE to airports. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted on social media that “untrained ICE agents lurking at our airports is asking for trouble” and may only worsen the situation.
—Becca Schneid contributed to this report.
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