The ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown began over a month ago. TSA agents are currently being asked to work without pay, and to no one’s surprise, thousands of officers are calling out and airport security lines are stretching across entire terminals. Senate Republicans offered President Donald Trump an off-ramp to end the shutdown, a bill that would fund every part of DHS except ICE. Trump rejected the offer. Air travel is in the midst of a perfect storm as fuel prices soar and New York’s major airports deal with a fatal crash and an ATC tower fire.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune pitched the proposal as a way to quickly return air travel to normal. Democrats have refused to approve funding for the department unless limitations are placed on immigration enforcement. According to NBC News, Thune’s idea would have ICE funded through a separate reconciliation bill later this year. The bill would require only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass, instead of 60, eliminating the need for support from Senate Democrats. It’s bewildering as to why Trump wouldn’t take the off-ramp, instead of railing against the filibuster on Truth Social.
The skies were already unfriendly enough
While DHS is shut down, ICE agents are still being paid. The agency’s payroll was pre-emptively funded through Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” last year. The President deployed agents to major airports across the country on Monday. The White House claims they are being used for crowd management to allow the few available TSA agents to focus solely on processing passengers through security checkpoints. However, there are already reports of ICE agents detaining people within terminals. The deployment is likely meant to pressure Senate Democrats into capitulating.
The Trump administration is only worsening the already-precarious state of air travel. The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is causing fuel prices to rise, which is already impacting ticket prices. The Department of Transportation’s push to fix air traffic control can’t come soon enough after a disastrous 24 hours in New York. A regional Air Canada flight crashed into a fire truck while landing at LaGuardia Airport, killing both pilots. On the other side of the Hudson, A fire in the air traffic control tower forced a ground stop at Newark-Liberty International Airport. I wouldn’t want to be running an airport right now.
