TSA officers at Philadelphia airport wonder why Trump waited so long to say he’d pay them

Transportation Security Administration employees at Philadelphia International Airport have gone weeks without a paycheck, struggling to afford their homes, childcare, or transportation to work.

But more than 40 days into a pandemonium-filled Department of Homeland Security shutdown, President Donald Trump now says he wants to offer them a reprieve by signing an order directing newly confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to pay TSA workers.

“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday evening.

TSA employees in Philadelphia, though, are frustrated that it’s taken three missed paychecks for the president to step in as House Republicans rejected a Senate-approved DHS funding package. TSA officers’ growing financial struggles have contributed to higher absentee rates, creating longer wait times for travelers at airport security checkpoints.

“If you’re saying that you can sign an executive order and force them to do so, why make us wait this long?” said Maggie Sabatino, executive vice president of AFGE Local 333, which represents TSA employees at PHL. “Why use us as pawns on a chessboard with two sides that don’t know how to play the game, if you were able to just sign this into effect?”

Charles Lee, a TSA officer at the Philadelphia airport, said he’s been struggling to make credit card payments and is balancing his 17-year-old daughter’s $1,200-a-month tuition to private school and upcoming expenses for her prom and senior class trip. Affording his commute to work is another obstacle — paying the tolls from New Jersey to Philadelphia, not to mention the rising costs of gas.

On the side, he drives for Uber and takes orders on Roadie, a delivery company.

“I wish people would be a little more understanding of what’s going on, because I don’t want to be late on my payments,” Lee said. “I work hard to try not to be late on my payments.”

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Philadelphia) said Trump’s announcement proved “he could have been paying them all along.”

“He and Republicans were holding them hostage in order to win more funding for ICE. Very happy that we stood up to Trump and he caved,” Boyle wrote.

A senior Trump administration official told the Associated Press that the president’s order would pay TSA agents using money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has been funding ICE during the shutdown.

Federal immigration agents have been at PHL and other airports this week in an attempt to ease disruptions — though their actual duties have been unclear.

The official compared the move to pay TSA to actions Trump took during a past shutdown to pay troops. The rationale is that Democrats — who held up DHS funding in an attempt to reign in ICE’s pursuance of Trump’s deportation agenda — have created an emergency, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

During an unrelated news conference Friday, Gov. Josh Shapiro questioned the legality of Trump’s order to essentially go around the budget process.

“If, in fact, the president really has the legal authority to do what he did, then he should have done this 30 or so days and not held these people hostage, including wonderful folks who live here in Pennsylvania and wear the uniform of the TSA,” Shapiro said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when Trump would sign the order.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers’ union, is “grateful” for Trump’s action, but national president Everett Kelley said in a statement that all DHS workers — included those in other agencies, like the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — should be paid quickly.

“These workers and their families cannot wait,” Kelley said. “All DHS workers must be paid immediately.”

This is the third shutdown DHS employees have endured in several months. And each lapse in funding takes a hit to morale — Lee said several colleagues at his security checkpoint have quit.

Extra “salt on the wound” this time, however, is ICE’s presence at PHL given that they’re the focus of the funding standoff, said Kelly Johnson, chief steward of Local 333 and a TSA officer.

DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement Friday that ICE had received the “standard TSA training curriculum” and agents were “verifying identification using TSA equipment and standard operating procedures” in addition to guarding entrances and exits, helping with logistics, and managing crowd control.

Johnson said this week she had observed officers standing around, eating yogurt, or looking at their phones.

“They’re getting paid, and we’re not,” Johnson said.

But as of Friday afternoon, the agents appeared to be getting more involved at PHL.

ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents were notifying TSA PreCheck travelers where the line started, reminding them to take out their IDs, and answering travelers’ question. PreCheck and regular TSA checkpoints had lines, but they were moving fast, with the longest wait at Terminal D lasting 19 minutes.

Vanessa Scherzer, of Philadelphia, and her daughter arrived three hours before their afternoon flight Friday due to the TSA staffing shortages, but were relieved to see long lines moving quickly.

“We expected long lines, but we had friends go through the airport earlier and said the lines weren’t long at all,” Scherzer said. “Some of our family members without PreCheck went through the regular checkpoint and they already made it through.”

The Trump administration sending the ICE agents to Philadelphia’s airport made Johnson even more skeptical of the president’s promise to pay them.

“I don’t think you have our best interest at heart,” Johnson said. “You’re gonna pay us now? When are we gonna get paid? In two weeks? What does that mean? Because that takes a minute to pay all these employees.”

Staff writers Ariana Perez-Castells and Sean Collins Walsh, as well as the Associated Press, contributed to this article.