For airline passengers, the shutdown answer is simple: Pay TSA officers

ATLANTA (AP) — Regardless of politics or destination, passengers at Atlanta’s airport were unified by one desire Saturday — it’s time to pay Transportation Security Administration employees.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — one of the world’s busiest airports — is a machine for moving people. But the shutdown is clogging TSA checkpoints that screen passengers and luggage for hazardous items.

Many passengers leaving Atlanta are now arriving up to four hours early, spooked that delays could cause them to miss flights.

Christian Childress, a private flight attendant, sees the aviation system up close. When the Redwood City, California, resident is working, he doesn’t have to wait in TSA lines. But he frequently goes through a checkpoint when flying commercial to get to his job. On Saturday, he was on his way to Nashville, Tennessee, on a leisure trip.

Childress said the shutdown effects have been “hit or miss” thus far, as he arrived at the Atlanta airport nearly three hours before his 1:30 p.m. flight.

“Issue No. 1 should be paying the people who need to get paid and keeping our air travel system secure,” Childress said. “Then they can debate whatever they want to debate about homeland security.”

TSA officers haven’t gotten a paycheck since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security partly shut down on Feb. 14. Democrats balked at funding the agency, while other departments are unaffected, demanding changes to immigration enforcement by federal agents following the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

But concerns about long airport lines are increasingly capturing attention.

A funding bill failed to advance Friday in the Senate, with Democrats declining to provide needed support. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would offer an alternative measure Saturday to fund just TSA. That too is likely to fail as lawmakers hold a rare weekend session.

Some passengers said it’s time for Democrats to give up on the shutdown.

“I don’t want to go between the Democrats and the Republicans, but I think the Democrats are holding everything up because they can’t get their way,” said Tyrone Williams, a retiree from the Atlanta suburb of Ellenwood. He was queued up for screening before his flight to Philadelphia on Saturday.

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to give federal immigration officers a role in airport security unless congressional Democrats agree to fund the department.

In a social media post, Trump said Democrats must immediately reach a deal or he “will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.”

He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would arrest “all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country” with a focus on those from Somalia.

Trump didn’t elaborate, and it wasn’t immediately clear if there’s an imminent plan to move ICE officers into airports.

Atlanta’s checkpoint wait times, which spiked as high as 90 minutes early on Saturday, cooled to a more manageable 25 minutes by midmorning on what is typically one of the slowest days of the week for air travel. But staffing shortages have forced airports to close checkpoints at times, with wait times swinging dramatically in Atlanta and some other cities.

Jackie Donahue of Oldsmar, Florida, was flying home to Tampa on Saturday, joined the line for one of the checkpoints at 11 a.m. for a 2:25 p.m. flight. She said she was grateful that TSA officers were still working without pay.

“We need to thank the people that are here,” said Donahue, a nurse returning from a European river cruise.

The vast majority of employees at TSA are considered essential and continue to work without pay during the government funding lapse. Homeland Security has said roughly 50,000 TSA employees would work during the shutdown. Nationwide on Thursday, about 10% of TSA officers missed work, the department reported. Absentee rates were two or three times higher in places.

Union leaders and federal officials say TSA officers are under financial pressure. Airport screeners have spent nearly half of the past 171 days with paychecks delayed by politics — 43 days last fall during the longest government shutdown in history, four days earlier this year during a brief funding lapse, and now 36 days and counting during the current shutdown.

At least 376 officers have quit since this shutdown began, according to officials, exacerbating turnover at an agency that historically has had some of the U.S. government’s highest attrition and lowest employee morale.

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Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed from West Palm Beach, Florida.