Waco Regional Airport was not affected Monday as federal immigration agents deployed to airports amid a standoff over paying federal airport workers, and airport officials don’t expect them anytime soon.
“(The Department of Homeland Security) sent them to 15 major airports right now,” James Harris, Waco’s airport administrator, told The Waco Bridge on Monday. “We would probably be on the last list to get something like that.”
Transportation Security Administration staff have gone weeks without pay due to an impasse in Congress over renewing funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
The department includes both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and TSA, but ICE funding has continued. Homeland Security moved to reinforce TSA workers with ICE agents at the urging of President Donald Trump.
TSA staff may remain unpaid indefinitely as Republicans and Democrats remain deadlocked on reforms to ICE, including masked agents, warrantless household raids and other sticking points.
“I haven’t noticed any effect yet (of the lapse in TSA funding),” Harris said. “Our TSA personnel are still showing up and working as normal.” He added that lines remain minimal at Waco’s airport.
The airport’s operations were recently threatened by another case of snarled funding late last year, when a partial government shutdown dragged on for more than six weeks.
Federal Aviation Administration staff are unaffected this time around, said Timothy Lindsey, a Waco Regional Airport aviation safety specialist and regional union representative for the AFL-CIO. But Lindsey experienced the consequences of depleted TSA ranks during a recent flight out of Atlanta.
“I had to walk all the way around the entire airport in order to find the end of the line,” he said.
More than 3,450 TSA employees, or 12% of the agency’s workforce, called out of work on Sunday, according to David Shephardson, a Reuters transportation reporter. The deployment of ICE agents is the latest twist in a rocky 24-hour period for the nation’s aviation industry.
A collision between a plane and a truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport Sunday left two pilots dead and 41 injured, while a frenetic ICE arrest of a mother inside San Francisco International Airport the same day preceded Monday morning’s announcement of agent’s deployment to more airports. Meanwhile, the U.S. war with Iran has led to elevated airfare and jet fuel prices.
