DHS Shutdown Exposes Structural Flaw in U.S. Airport Security Model
The Department of Homeland Security shut down at midnight Friday, forcing 61,000 TSA screeners at more than 430 commercial airports to work without pay while air traffic controllers, employed by the separately funded FAA, continue receiving paychecks as usual. The split reveals a structural peculiarity of American aviation: the United States is the only major aviation market where airport security is designed to collapse during budget disputes.
A Design That Guarantees Hostages
When Congress created the TSA in 2001, it made an unusual choice. Rather than establishing a security regulator that set standards for airports to meet, lawmakers merged the regulator with a 61,000-person screening workforce. The federal government became both the rule-maker and the service provider, a combination nearly nonexistent in European aviation.
That structure creates the current crisis. About 95% of TSA workers are classified as essential personnel, meaning they cannot legally walk away from their posts during a shutdown. Airports cannot supplement or replace them with contracted screeners. The system is a federal monopoly by design, and when federal funding lapses, the monopoly doesn't dissolve, it just stops paying its workers.
The consequences played out during the previous 43-day federal shutdown. TSA temporarily closed two checkpoints at Philadelphia International Airport. The government ordered all commercial airlines to reduce their domestic flight schedules. Some TSA employees reported sleeping in their cars to save on gas, selling blood and plasma, and taking second jobs.
The European Alternative
European airports don't face this problem. In most European countries, airport security is the responsibility of the airport operator, handled either by the airport itself or by a contracted security company depending on the country. When parliaments deadlock over budgets, airport checkpoints keep running because they're not federal government functions.
Marc Scribner of the Reason Foundation has outlined legislation that would move the United States toward this model: separate airport security screening provision from regulation, and allow airports to contract with private security providers. The TSA would remain as the regulator, setting standards and conducting oversight. But airports would hire and pay the screeners, eliminating the structural vulnerability to federal shutdowns.
This isn't deregulation. It's structural separation, the same principle that keeps European aviation security functioning regardless of parliamentary chaos.
Shutdown Theater at the Wrong Stage
The current funding lapse stems from a dispute that has nothing to do with airport security. Democrats in the House and Senate refused to support DHS funding without new restrictions on federal immigration operations, including limits on ICE use of masks and stronger warrant requirements following the killing of two American citizens by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis. Republicans pressed for a continuing resolution to buy time for talks.
Immigration agencies received $75 billion in funding from the tax and spending package passed earlier this year, allowing them to continue operating largely uninterrupted during the DHS shutdown. ICE agents will receive paychecks. Border Patrol will remain funded. The actual subject of the dispute, immigration enforcement, proceeds normally.
The shutdown happens at airport checkpoints instead. TSA screeners become the visible face of a funding fight over policies they don't implement, at facilities unrelated to the border. Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill warned before the shutdown that screeners would be required to work without pay during a DHS funding lapse, but the structure gives her no alternatives. She cannot hire contractors. She cannot allow airports to bring in supplemental staff. The federal monopoly means the only option is unpaid labor.
Why This Keeps Happening
The TSA model transforms routine legislative disputes into aviation crises because it links airport operations directly to congressional appropriations. Every budget fight becomes an airport security emergency, regardless of whether airport security has anything to do with the underlying disagreement.
During the 43-day shutdown, the pattern was identical: the dispute centered on border wall funding, but the crisis manifested in airport security lines. Screeners worked without pay while the actual border agencies continued operating. The structure guarantees this outcome. As long as screening is a federal monopoly staffed by essential personnel who cannot quit, budget disputes will be performed on their bodies.
The European model avoids this because it decouples airport operations from national government funding cycles. An airport in Amsterdam doesn't shut down checkpoints when the Dutch parliament deadlocks over immigration policy. The airport pays the screeners. The government regulates the standards. The functions are separate.
The Path Not Taken
Congress had options in 2001. It could have created a federal regulator that set security standards and audited compliance, similar to how the FAA regulates airline safety without employing pilots. Airports would have hired screeners to meet those standards, just as airlines hire pilots to meet FAA requirements. Budget fights in Washington would affect the regulator's oversight capacity, but checkpoints would keep running.
Instead, Congress chose the federal monopoly model. The decision made sense in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when the priority was replacing the patchwork of private contractors who had failed to stop the hijackers. But the emergency response became permanent structure, and the structure now generates recurring emergencies.
Screeners won't miss full paychecks until mid-March, giving Congress time to resolve the funding dispute before the pain becomes acute. But the temporary reprieve doesn't address the underlying design flaw. The next budget fight will produce the same crisis, because the system is built to produce it.
The question isn't whether TSA screeners are essential, they obviously are. The question is whether their essentialness requires them to be federal employees held hostage to budget disputes over unrelated policies. Every other major aviation market answered that question differently.