Trump's TSA Backpay Slashes Airport Lines for Treasure Coast Travelers Amid Shutdown

Security lines that swelled to four hours at major U.S. airports shrank to minutes Monday after President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to pay Transportation Security Administration officers their backpay — a stopgap that eased immediate chaos but left the underlying DHS shutdown unresolved at 44 days and counting.

What had been a four-hour checkpoint wait at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport dropped to 10 minutes or less by Monday afternoon. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson and Baltimore-Washington International returned to near-normal wait times. LaGuardia Airport in New York saw waits push past two hours Monday morning, officials said, but that appeared to be an outlier.

For Treasure Coast residents flying out of Palm Beach International Airport — the closest major hub for Martin and St. Lucie county travelers — easing of national callout rates could bring relief during the peak spring break weeks of late March and early April.

The backpay does not end the crisis. TSA's union, the American Federation of Government Employees, said Monday that workers received only partial backpay, with the remainder — including disputed overtime and tax-withholding amounts — expected by next week. More than 500 officers quit during the shutdown, and thousands who could not report to work without pay now face disciplinary action after TSA quietly removed furlough protections from its internal guidance Sunday, according to Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA union.

"Backpay alone does not fix those problems," the union said in a statement.

Trump had rejected bipartisan congressional efforts to fund TSA separately while broader DHS negotiations continued. Democrats have conditioned their support on additional oversight of immigration enforcement operations, including judicial warrants and prohibitions on raids near schools and churches. Republicans and the White House have agreed to negotiate some points, but no deal has been reached. The Senate held a brief session Monday without taking up the House funding bill, then resumed its two-week recess.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has offered to host an Easter dinner at the White House for members of Congress who return to resolve the impasse. She confirmed that new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's arrival does not represent a policy shift: "It has always been the policy of this president and this administration to deport the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals," she said.

Treasure Coast travelers using Palm Beach International Airport face elevated risk of security delays throughout the 44-day DHS shutdown as national TSA callout rates at major airports topped 40 percent. Federal ICE agents were deployed to some airports a week ago to supplement security; White House border czar Tom Homan said their presence depends on how quickly TSA staffing recovers. No funding fix has been signed into law, meaning the partial DHS shutdown — now the longest department-level shutdown on record — could extend further into the spring travel season. The Senate is not expected back in session until after Easter.

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