Hours-Long Waits At BWI As ICE Deployed Amid Shutdown

BALTIMORE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deploying personnel to BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport over the weekend amid hours-long security waits, as Transportation Security Administration officers have gone over a month without paychecks in the wake of a partial government shutdown.

“Primary aviation security functions, including passenger and baggage screening responsibilities, will remain with trained, skilled TSA personnel,” the Maryland Aviation Administration said in a statement Saturday. “The ICE personnel will provide operational support for TSA to speed up the clearance process for passengers.

“MAA has been informed by TSA that ICE’s primary focus is security operations, not immigration enforcement, during their deployment to BWI Marshall Airport.”

The airport had recommended travelers arrive four hours early due to wait times Saturday morning that were “not previously experienced,” according to a social media post from BWI. On Sunday, wait times had improved, but travelers flying out of Concourses A, B and C were still advised to come three hours before scheduled departure, the airport said in a follow-up X post Sunday.

TSA officers could get their first full paychecks in more than six weeks as early as Monday after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday instructing the Homeland Security secretary to pay them immediately.

But travel experts and labor leaders said the mammoth security lines at some U.S. airports would not disappear overnight and could linger into next week or longer while TSA workers wait for their back pay, airports assess their staffing and Congress remains at odds over funding the Department of Homeland Security.

TSA personnel have worked without pay since Feb. 14 due to the dispute in Congress over federal immigration operations.

As the record-long partial government shutdown went on, some of the officers who screen passengers and bags called out of scheduled shifts; several thousand missing work on a given day was enough to cause hours-long wait times and closed express lanes at airports in Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York and elsewhere.

Trump signed the executive order after House Republicans rejected a bill passed by the Senate early Friday that would have funded the TSA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not ICE and Border Patrol.

A handful of airports experienced daily TSA officer callout rates of 40 percent. Nationwide on Thursday, more than 11.8 percent of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, the most so far.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.