WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will sign an order allowing the Department of Homeland Security to pay airport security workers who have gone without a full paycheck since the shutdown began in mid-February. 

The order for Transportation Security Administration workers does not appear to include pay for other federal employees working for DHS, including those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection have largely been insulated from the DHS shutdown since Republicans approved tens of billions in additional funding for those two agencies in last year’s “big, beautiful” law. 

“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it! I want to thank our hardworking TSA Agents and also, ICE, for the incredible help they have given us at the Airports,” Trump wrote on social media. “I will not allow the Radical Left Democrats to hold our Country hostage any longer.”

Trump’s decision will give both chambers of Congress, which are controlled by Republicans, a bit of cover to leave for their two-week spring break without actually reaching bipartisan compromise to fund DHS. 

Democrats have held up the department’s funding bill in the Senate to demand new constraints on federal immigration actions after officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said shortly after Trump’s announcement that his decision “takes the immediate pressure off” lawmakers to make a deal, but that it’s a “short-term solution.”

Thune said “we’ll see” when asked if negotiations over the DHS funding bill would continue. 

“I’ll have more to say about that here soon,” he said. “But we obviously are going to try and fund as much of the DHS budget as we possibly can.”

Thune hadn’t provided an update as of 10 p.m. Eastern as senators struggled to find a path forward. 

Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said earlier in the evening that talks over funding the department continued with Republicans. 

“There’s an active negotiation going on. I hope they don’t unilaterally decide to walk away. But that’s their decision,” he said. “They ultimately take orders from a higher power.”

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said around the same time “it’s just not true that we’re not in a negotiation.”

“It may be that one person or the other has lost patience and that would be too bad,” he said. “But we’re still talking.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Trump made the right decision to choose to pay TSA agents as the shutdown drags on. 

“I just got off the phone with the president,” he said. “The president is doing absolutely the right thing. He’s showing leadership.”

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., released a statement saying the administration needs to explain to Congress what funding it plans to divert to pay TSA workers and why it didn’t take the step sooner. 

“If the White House believes they have the authority to pay these workers, then every day for the past 41 days, they have been making a conscious decision not to pay them,” she said. “As the lines got longer, as workers called out, as agents quit or got second jobs, they chose again and again not to pay these workers.”

A senior administration official said the administration plans to use money from Republicans’ signature tax and spending package that was enacted last summer. 

Union reaction

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that while the union is “grateful” that TSA employees will be paid, lawmakers need to find a deal to fully fund the entire department. 

“These workers and their families cannot wait,” he said. “All DHS workers must be paid immediately.

“Congress needs to continue working to pass a real, bipartisan appropriations deal that funds DHS, pays all DHS workers, and keeps these vital agencies running — even if that means canceling their upcoming vacation.”

WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday were reading through a new Republican offer to fund the Department of Homeland Security that could end the shutdown that began nearly six weeks ago, with a congressional recess set to begin.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in the afternoon that Democrats hadn’t “responded officially” to a proposal GOP negotiators sent over in the morning but that discussions were ongoing. He described it as the “last and final” offer.

“There are some language requests that they made that we did everything we could to accommodate,” he said. 

Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said “it’s a good sign that there is paper going back and forth,” though he said the two political parties are still somewhat far apart.

“I think there’s a lot of sense of urgency around getting TSA funded,” he said, referring to the Transportation Security Administration and long wait times at some of the nation’s airports. Some unpaid TSA officers are calling out sick, causing jams in security lines.

“But frankly, we’re not that far from where we’ve been for weeks, which is, Democrats want real reforms to ICE and CBP and are resistant to funding them without reforms, and Republicans would like us to fund them without reforms beyond what Secretary Noem committed to,” Coons said, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies.

Some Republican senators, he said, view the confirmation of former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin earlier this week as a form of compromise on DHS’ immigration enforcement activities. Mullin replaced the former secretary, Kristi Noem.

That, however, isn’t enough for Democrats.

“My Republican friends on this topic have said, ‘Hey, Secretary Mullin in his confirmation committed to A, B, C, D,’” Coons said. “And that’s a far cry from, ‘We’ll put it in statute or we have promulgated this in regulation.’ So that’s some of the problems. I think they feel like they’ve already offered key reforms in Secretary Mullin’s confirmation. And at least the senators that I’ve talked to don’t think that’s enough.”

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said there is “a conundrum” over how to provide more funding for Customs and Border Protection “without some agreement that they need to go back to their statutory role, not doing interior enforcement.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had not commented publicly on the latest Republican offer as of late afternoon. 

Trump vows ‘very drastic measures’

President Donald Trump said during a morning Cabinet meeting at the White House that he wants to see a deal to fund DHS soon, but didn’t disclose any details of the latest offer.  

“They need to end the shutdown immediately, or we’ll have to take some very drastic measures,” he said, opting not to elaborate on what he meant. 

Thune said he’d leave the White House to speak for Trump on whether he supports the latest Republican DHS funding offer but added that administration staff have “been involved in the back-and-forth that has occurred overnight and all morning.”

“It’s never done until it’s done,” he said. 

Timing on a deal to fund DHS is somewhat important, with the House scheduled to depart Friday for a two-week spring break that their Senate colleagues are supposed to leave for as well. 

Thune said the chamber will likely head off for the recess if they fund DHS, but suspects “we’ll probably be around here” if they don’t.  

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., didn’t commit to put a reworked DHS appropriations bill on the House floor, especially if it doesn’t include funding for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

“We have never been in favor of breaking the bill up,” he said. 

But Johnson said it may be possible for Republicans to move funding for that specific program through the complex budget reconciliation process, which the party used last year to approve tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement and deportation in its “big, beautiful” law.  

“If they break away that subset, I suppose we’d have to fund it through reconciliation and find some other means,” he said. 

Working without pay

Workers at the several agencies within DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Secret Service, will continue to work without pay until Congress brokers some sort of funding deal for the department.

Any federal employee who handles national security issues or the protection of life or property keeps working during a shutdown. All others are supposed to be sent home. Everyone is supposed to get back pay once the shutdown ends. 

TSA airport security screeners this weekend will miss their second full paycheck since the funding lapse began, after seeing only a partial paycheck early in the shutdown.

While TSA workers are required to work without pay during a shutdown, thousands have called in sick over the last six weeks as they seek gig work and other ways to pay bills. Call-out rates nationwide reached double digits this week, with some airports seeing more than 40% of employees miss shifts.

Some TSA workers have turned to selling plasma to make ends meet, officials from the union representing the agency’s employees told reporters Tuesday.

The staffing shortages have led to hours-long waits at security lines in some highly trafficked airports, causing passengers to miss flights and generally adding to the anxiety of air travel.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the administration “is having discussions about a number of ideas to blunt the impact of the Democrat shutdown crisis, but no preparations or plans are currently underway. The best and easiest way to pay TSA Agents is to fund DHS.” 

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators showed no movement Wednesday toward a deal to end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, despite the problems it’s causing for the thousands of federal workers set to miss yet another paycheck and travelers waiting hours to get through airport security lines. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said an offer from Democrats, sent over in the morning, was completely unacceptable and that GOP lawmakers wouldn’t even bother to send back a counterproposal. 

“They know better. They’re asking for things that have already been turned down,” he said. “So it just seems like they’re going in circles.”

Thune said the chamber would vote later on a funding bill for DHS that doesn’t include Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the deportation and detention arm of the agency.

“They said over the weekend that they didn’t want to fund ERO. They’ll fund everything else,” he said. “So we’re going to give an opportunity to vote to do that.”

Thune said Republicans’ decision to remove funding for those deportation programs represents a “significant” compromise that shows GOP lawmakers are “coming to the table and trying to get a deal.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the offer Democrats sent over represented “a reasonable, good-faith proposal that contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about now for months.”

Schumer said a proposal Republicans sent earlier this week didn’t include any of the overhauls to immigration enforcement that Democrats have been talking about since January, when federal officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. 

“For Republicans to send us a proposal that has no reforms is bad faith as well and will only slow things down,” he said. 

Trump ‘pretty much not happy’ with ‘any deal’

President Donald Trump remains a wild card in the negotiations. His support will be needed for any DHS funding bill to become law, regardless of how much longer it takes lawmakers to reach consensus. 

“Well, I don’t want to comment until I see the deal,” he said Tuesday when asked about ongoing DHS talks. “But as you know, they’re negotiating a deal. I guess they’re getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., when asked about those comments during a Wednesday morning press conference, appeared skeptical of breaking off some line items in the DHS funding bill.

Any legislation to end the shutdown that passes the Senate will need to move through the House before it could reach Trump’s desk. 

“We always have Homeland funded as an entire department. There’s obvious reasons for that. It’s very important. I don’t think we need to be breaking it apart,” he said. “And so I think that’s what the president is reflecting there. He wants Congress to do its dang job.”

Will Congress leave town without an agreement?

It isn’t clear whether the Senate will still depart for its two-week spring break without a bipartisan agreement to fund DHS, which has been shut down since Feb. 14. 

Legislation cannot advance in that chamber without the support of at least 60 senators, making buy-in from each party essential to end the shutdown. 

Thune said he hadn’t made a final decision but seemed likely to let lawmakers head back home for the scheduled recess absent progress toward a deal. 

“If we’re not here, and when the Democrats are willing to make a deal, we’d certainly get everybody back to vote on it,” he said. “But no decisions on that yet. So hopefully the next couple days will be productive.”

Until a deal is reached, the DHS funding lapse will continue to affect workers and programs run by many of the agencies within the department, including the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations have largely continued uninterrupted since Republicans approved tens of billions in additional funding for those agencies in their “big, beautiful” law. 

‘We’ve got a lot of plate spinning’

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said lawmakers need to find some sort of solution to fund DHS following weeks of stalemate. 

“At the end of the day, we got to get them open,” he said. “And the frustration that we have is we literally offered what they asked for three days ago, and then suddenly it’s like, ‘Oh no, no, we got new stuff.’”

Lankford said he doesn’t want to see senators leave for the recess without a deal to reopen DHS. 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said lawmakers should stick around Capitol Hill until they solve at least some of the several outstanding issues. 

“We’ve got a lot of plate spinning. And I’m afraid if we leave until we get some certainty around them, a few of them are going to fall to the floor and people are going to be wondering what’s going on,” he said.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said the way the Trump administration has approached immigration enforcement and deportation has led to the problems over DHS funding. 

“I have a constitutional responsibility to fund only a government that obeys the law,” he said. “I would be violating my oath of office to fund ICE without reforms.”

Moreno and Merkley face off

Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno went to the floor in the evening to ask unanimous consent to approve a bill that would fund every component of DHS for two weeks, providing back pay to all of its employees. 

Moreno said that would give senators enough time to work out a bipartisan deal on the full-year DHS spending bill if they canceled the recess and stayed around to work. 

Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley proposed that lawmakers instead fund TSA through the end of September, when the current fiscal year ends. 

Moreno then asked Merkley to change that request to fund every agency within DHS except for Enforcement and Removal Operations for the rest of the fiscal year. 

Merkley then said he would agree to fund every agency within DHS except ICE and CBP.

“He keeps asking for Customs and Border Protection to be funded without modifying how they’re behaving across the nation,” Merkley said. “He keeps asking for ICE to be funded without modifying their actions where they’re acting like a secret police.”

The senators were unable to come to an agreement to approve funding for any of the agencies at DHS for any length of time during a nearly hour-long exchange that became tense at several points. 

Moreno said the impasse represented “a sad day for the United States Senate.” 

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

Transportation Security Administration officers are struggling to afford basic necessities as they approach their second missed full paycheck since a funding lapse began last month, union leaders said at a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Officials from the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 44,000 TSA officers nationwide, urged Congress to immediately find a solution to the partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14. More than 400 TSA workers have quit their jobs since the start of the shutdown, with thousands missing shifts.

Mac Johnson, who represents TSA workers in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, said his members are increasingly telling him about difficulties affording groceries, housing costs, auto insurance and other essentials. 

Some have turned to selling plasma to make ends meet, he said.

“It’s not that these employees, their families, are hungry,” Johnson said. “They’re beginning to starve, literally starve, because they do not have the funds … to provide food for their families … So we not only strongly encourage, we demand that the Congress and this administration sit down like adults and resolve this matter so these employees won’t be placing themselves between a rock and a hard place.”

Dispute over immigration crackdown

After two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January — and other chaotic episodes sparked by President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation push — Democrats in Congress demanded changes to immigration enforcement policy as a condition for funding the Department of Homeland Security, which includes TSA and conducts most immigration enforcement. 

Senators have indicated in recent days they could be approaching a deal to fund the non-immigration parts of TSA, but union officials said their members must be paid immediately.

“We’ve been hearing about optimism and progress for weeks,” AFGE President Everett Kelly said. “Our members cannot eat optimism or pay rent with progress.”

As airports see TSA staffing shortages while officers miss work, security lines in some airports have stretched for hours.

Even once the shutdown ends, it could take two weeks to a month for workers to receive their back pay, Aaron Barker, the president of the union covering airports in Georgia, and Johnny Jones, the secretary-treasurer of the nationwide AFGE chapter for TSA workers, said. 

That could potentially mean it will take weeks to return to normal staffing levels as officers continue to miss shifts to seek gig work or other quick payouts, they said.

TSA officers have missed one partial and one full paycheck since mid-February. Another paycheck is due this weekend, the AFGE officials said.

Blame game

Asked about the situation affecting TSA employees, DHS provided a statement from spokeswoman Lauren Bis that closely resembled a comment she gave a day earlier blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

“American travelers are facing HOURS long waits at airports across the country and more than 450 TSA officers quit and thousands have called out sick from work because they are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” Bis said.

At the U.S. Capitol, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump for demanding that a national voter ID bill be included in a deal to reopen DHS.

“We wasted a day of negotiations because of Donald Trump’s temper tantrum,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a floor speech. “A day may not seem a lot to the president, but that’s another day of TSA workers needlessly waiting for checks, another day of travelers standing for hours at a time at security.”

ICE ‘in the way’

The administration has dispatched agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another DHS agency, to a handful of airports to assist TSA workers. ICE is fully funded, despite the DHS shutdown, because Republicans’ spending and tax cuts law last year provided money for immigration enforcement.

White House border czar Tom Homan has said ICE agents would help with tasks like guarding exits and not conduct activities that require extensive training, freeing up TSA officers to operate x-ray machines and other more specialized tasks.

But AFGE officials said the ICE officers are not helping.

“All ICE is doing is in the way,” Hydrick Thomas, the president of the AFGE council covering TSA workers, said. “We’re still trying to figure out why they’re there. No way ICE is gonna help us make passengers feel safe.”

Airport security workers missed work Monday at the highest rate since a partial government shutdown began in mid-February, the Department of Homeland Security said, and the Trump administration sent immigration officials to some airports in an attempt to keep lines moving.

Travelers reported hourslong security lines at major airports in Atlanta and Houston, while waits of 30 minutes or more were reported at several other hubs Monday.

Nearly 3,500 Transportation Security Administration agents, roughly 11.8% of the scheduled nationwide workforce, called out from work Monday. TSA officers have been working without pay since the department that oversees TSA began a funding lapse Feb. 14 due to a dispute in Congress over immigration enforcement.

Call out rates were over 20% at a handful of major airports, according to DHS. They were:

• 42.3% in New Orleans
• 41.5% in Atlanta
• 39.1% in Houston
• 38.1% in Baltimore
• 37.4% at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport
• 24.7% in Pittsburgh
• 24.2% in Philadelphia
• 21.7% at New York’s Laguardia Airport
• 20.3% in Phoenix

ICE to airports

More than 400 TSA workers have quit since the “pointless, reckless shutdown” began, DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in an emailed statement. 

Bis blamed the shutdown and related problems with air security staffing on Democrats in Congress, and confirmed DHS would send officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another DHS agency, to assist TSA at airports.

TSA officers “are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” she said. 

“While the Democrats continue to put the safety, dependability, and ease of our air travel at risk, President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted. This will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimize air travel disruptions.”

President Donald Trump praised ICE in comments to reporters Monday morning and suggested he could also call upon National Guard troops to help at airports.

“They stepped in so, so strongly,” he said of ICE officers. “They’ll do great. And if that’s not enough, I’ll bring in the National Guard.”

Tom Homan, the White House border czar who coordinates much of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, said in a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that ICE officers would primarily handle duties that did not require extensive training, such as making sure no one entered secure areas through exits.

“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise,” he said, rather than screening through the X-ray machines, he told CNN’s Dana Bash. “But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant role, such as guarding an exit, so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker.”

DHS declined to provide a list of airports to which ICE would deploy, citing “operational security” concerns.

ICE officers were spotted at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the nation’s busiest, where waits of four hours in security lines were reported on Monday.

Shutdown persists

Federal law requires TSA officers to work, even during a shutdown, though they will not be paid until funding is restored.

Despite being at the center of the shutdown debate, ICE has not been affected by the DHS funding lapse because Republicans provided the agency massive funding in the tax cuts and spending bill they passed along party lines last year.

Democrats have refused to fund a fiscal 2026 appropriations bill for the department without major changes to the administration’s immigration enforcement, which reached a tipping point following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“Because of the Democrat shutdown, President Trump is using every tool available to help American travelers who are facing hours long lines at airports across the country—especially during this spring break and holiday season that is very important for many American families,” Bis said.

In a rare weekend session, the U.S. Senate again failed to advance a funding measure for DHS on Saturday.

Deadly LaGuardia crash

The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada plane died, and more than 40 people were injured, after the jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia airport late Sunday.

The incident was unrelated to problems with TSA, which is not responsible for safety on runways or elsewhere outside of airport terminals, but it further delayed and complicated travel in the New York City area.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.