Could TSA Chaos Return to the Atlanta Airport? DHS Funding to Run Out

More than 60 days into a partial government shutdown, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the agency may have to stop paying salaries in May.

"Fortunately, what President Trump did through an executive order allowed us to grab emergency funding that came out of the One Big Beautiful Bill ... but that money is dried up, if I continue down this path, the first week of May," Mullin said in an interview with Fox News.

When paychecks last went unpaid, officers with the Transportation Security Administration began calling out of their shifts, leaving just a few officers to handle security lines at airports across the country.

At airports like Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, lines to get through airport security lasted hours and passengers missed flights as they waited for their identities to be checked and bags scanned.

If funding runs out before the partial shutdown is over, will chaos return to Atlanta?

President Trump ordered funds to be rerouted to pay airport security on March 27, after the agency had already been running unfunded for weeks. The order used "funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the Democrat-led shutdown," according to the decree.

TSA officers did start to receive paychecks after the order, but many have not received backpay for the hours they worked before the order was signed and after the government was shut down, meaning many are still short significant wages.

In Atlanta, city officials have voted to prevent power from being cut off in homes of TSA workers who have missed payments, and the shutdown has become a major talking point in the Georgia race for U.S. Senate.

TSA officers were also working at the end of March unpaid while Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were providing support, but were being paid. In some cases, paid ICE officers were scanning IDs while unpaid TSA workers were working the security scanning machines at Hartsfield-Jackson.

Last week, TSA's deputy administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill argued privatizing TSA could be a way to keep officers' salaries from being at the whim of political actions.

"As of today, TSA has been shut down for 109 days, nearly 60% of FY26. If this year demonstrates anything, it is that the TSA workforce and our operations cannot depend on predictable Congressional funding," Nguyen McNeill said in the April 16 hearing.

The deputy administrator argued airports that have already started some form of privatization were spared the long lines seen in other airports like Hartsfield-Jackson.

Privatization of TSA was also included in the controversial Project 2025, a conservative playbook from the Heritage Foundation for the second Trump presidency. The plan argues the current system makes officers both the regulators and the regulated organization, and that it is too costly.

In the early hours Thursday, Senate Republicans adopted a budget resolution that would allow Congress to vote on a budget reconciliation package next month. The package would reopen DHS and fund immigration enforcement, The Hill reported.

The resolution passed along party lines, with Lisa Murkowski (AK-R) and Rand Paul (KY-R) voting against the resolution with Democrats.