TSA officers still calling out sick after Trump's directive to pay them
Some of the nation's airports are still seeing long wait lines as Transportation Security Administration officers continued to call out sick over the weekend, despite President Donald Trump signing a presidential memorandum ordering the Department of Homeland Security to begin issuing paychecks.
The TSA workers have been required to work without pay for the past 44 days due to an ongoing fight between Democrats and Republicans over the way immigration enforcement has been handled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
White House Border Czar Tom Homan said during an interview on CNN on Sunday that TSA officers' paychecks will "hopefully" arrive by Monday or Tuesday.
Despite the promised resumption of pay, many of the TSA officers who haven't yet quit continue to call out sick, according to DHS officials. At least 10.27% of all scheduled TSA workers called out sick on Saturday, according to DHS.
The airport with the highest number of TSA officers calling out sick on Saturday was Bush International Airport in Houston, where 38.3% of the officers scheduled to work didn't show up, according to the DHS. The second-highest number of TSA officers calling out sick on Saturday was at William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, where 36.8% of TSA officers were no-shows, according to DHS.
Baltimore's Thurgood Marshall Airport, New York's John F. Kennedy International and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport all reported that at least 30% of TSA officers called out sick on Saturday, according to DHS.
More than 500 TSA officers have quit since the funding crisis began on Feb. 14, according to DHS.
Trump signed a directive on Friday, instructing his newly sworn-in DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin to work with the Office of Management and Budget to use funds "that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations" to pay the agency's workforce.
"TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30," the TSA said in a statement on Sunday. "TSA is grateful to the President and Secretary for their leadership to put money back into the pockets of TSA employees who worked without pay during the longest government shutdown in history."
Earlier in the funding crisis, Trump deployed ICE agents, who remained funded through appropriations from Trump's tax and spending bill passed last summer, to airports to assist TSA officers dealing with long security lines.
Democratic Congress members questioned the president's authority to direct the DHS to pay TSA officers, while also demanding to know why he didn't implement such orders earlier if he had this authority all along.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that his party is not blocking funding for the DHS after House Republicans did not take up a vote last week on the Senate-passed bill to fund most of the department.
"We're not holding up all of the money for all the Department of Homeland Security," Van Hollen told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "That's just a false statement. We have said repeatedly, repeatedly, we should fund [the Transportation Security Administration]."
Democrats blocked funding for DHS more than a month ago, demanding reforms to federal immigration agents after federal agents shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defended the House's position on Sunday, saying on "This Week" that some senators regret their vote without sharing their names.
"We actually read their bill, and frankly, a number of senators have expressed buyer's remorse with what they did at 3 in the morning," Scalise said. "One of the things that we had real concerns with is it actually defunds over 25% of the baseline operations of the Department of Homeland Security, 25% at a time when we're at a heightened threat level."
