Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Monday that more than 1,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers have left the agency since the partial shutdown began on Feb. 14.

Amid the record-breaking lapse in funding, DHS said that with summer months approaching and the FIFA World Cup kicking off in June, impacts to travelers could be significant.

The department announced the drastic drop in staffing in a post on X, blaming Democrats in Congress for the prolonged shutdown.

“This loss has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased TSA’s ability to meet passenger demand and left critical gaps in staffing, as each new recruit requires 4-6 MONTHS of training,” DHS wrote.

Fliers at airports across the United States experienced hours-long security lines earlier in the spending lapse.

To ease travel pains, President Donald Trump on March 23 deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to 14 U.S. airports.

“[The American public is] going through a big struggle right now, and we just put ICE in charge, and they’re helping TSA—the agents—and they’re working together so far very well,” Trump said at the time.

If longer wait times persisted, Trump pitched the idea of also deploying the National Guard.

Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, told The Epoch Times that from the start of the shutdown through March 24, 450 TSA agents had quit. Thousands more were calling out sick and could not afford gas, childcare, food, or rent, she added.

“As Democrats continue to put the safety, reliability, and efficiency of our air travel system at risk, [President] Donald Trump is taking decisive action—deploying hundreds of ICE officers, already funded by Congress, to the airports under the greatest strain,” Bis said.

TSA acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told Congress on March 25 that airports might be forced to close if the partial shutdown continued.

“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing how we maintain our operations,” McNeill told lawmakers.

“And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”

Only days after McNeil testified on Capitol Hill, Trump signed a presidential memorandum to pay TSA agents with DHS emergency funds.

More than 50,000 TSA employees had been working without pay for weeks.

Wait times at airports eased as TSA agents began receiving paychecks and backpay. Security lines that were taking multiple hours to pass through were down to 10 minutes or less.

But there’s still no long-term plan from Congress to fully fund DHS.

Republicans and Democrats are blaming each other for the spending standstill. An array of funding proposals have come from both sides, but none have successfully advanced.

GOP lawmakers are criticizing their counterparts for not passing their proposals, as Democrats demand a guaranteed overhaul of immigration operations in exchange for a funding agreement.

On March 27, the House passed a stopgap plan to fund DHS for 60 days. The bill was sent to the Senate, which had already left for a two-week recess.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned on April 21 that DHS will soon run out of its emergency funds to pay TSA if Congress cannot reach a deal. The money would run dry by the first week in May, he said in a “Fox and Friends” interview.

“My payroll at DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks,” Mullin said. “There is no more emergency fund, so the president can’t do another executive order for us to use money, because there’s no more money there.”

The Senate, using the budget reconciliation process, advanced on April 23 a $70 billion funding plan for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through 2029. The process allows passage by a simple majority, bypassing the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

If brought up by the House, the resolution would allow congressional committees to write detailed legislation on allocation of the funds, which would then require Trump’s signature to take effect.

Trump praised the Senate’s effort and urged Republicans to unify to achieve full funding for DHS.