Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding has been deferred due to unpassed legislation that would continue funding for the department into 2026. Due to this lack of funding, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers have not been showing up to work, resulting in lengthy security lines in airports. 

Many travelers have posted on social media about waiting for hours in security lines, with some up to four hours, while only a few TSA workers are there to perform security checks. Tate Flowers, a Skyline student who went through the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii, said, “I think there were only two TSA agents working, 
so that’s probably what made it so slow.” Flowers reported that she waited almost an hour to get through the airport security.

 Many airports have put pages on their websites for travelers to check an estimate of how long security will take. The John F. Kennedy International Airport website states, “Security wait times are calculated and updated in real time. Note that measurement is from checkpoint queue entry and overflows beyond this area may lead to longer waits.”

While going through the security in the Salt Lake International (SLC) and LaGuardia (LGA) Airport, I waited about twenty to twenty-five minutes each time. In LGA there were about ten or less TSA agents working, with some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents helping with REAL ID screenings at the TSA checkpoints. The lines seemed long, but were intermittently moving. Morgan Del Grosso, a teacher at Skyline who went to Costa Rica over spring break, said that she experienced almost no wait at either airport. “My family did pre-check, and it took them longer through pre-check,” she reported. 

Although funding was held off in mid-February, funding and back pay are coming back to the department starting in mid-April. President Donald Trump posted on April 2 to his social media site, Truth Social: “Republicans are UNIFIED, and moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers […] I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security.”

However, these solutions are not yet concrete. This partial government shutdown has been the longest one yet—over two months—and still has no signs of resolving DHS funding. Disagreements between Republicans and Democrats about the continuance of funding ICE has been a main rift for refunding DHS. Flowers says, “I think both parties, political parties, need to be more cooperative and come up with some sort of compromise for the better of all of America.”