Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It’s a bad time to be a Transportation Security Officer at La Guardia. A fatal crash closed the airport Monday morning, leaving travelers with canceled flights and winding, hourslong security lines — which only compounded the challenges of week five of a government shutdown that has forced TSA officers to show up to work without pay with many callouts and some agents even quitting. (This is the third shutdown in less than a year.) Oh, and this week marked the beginning of President Trump’s plan to send ICE agents to airports, including La Guardia, to “help.” We talked to Kyle Pigott, a TSA officer at La Guardia and the vice-president of Local 2222, about the current madness — and what advice he has for people braving airline travel right now.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The sad thing is it’s tough but it’s not a surprise. We’ve been furloughed over 90 days. That’s ridiculous. Right now, I’m missing two and a half checks. Some people have taken out unemployment assistance. Some people have relied on predatory loans to get by. You have to pay off your car, you have to pay your mortgage. I had to apply for food stamps a couple weeks ago. It’s embarrassing as a federal employee for ten years. And I don’t even have children.

We’re dwindling. You might be able to miss one paycheck and say, “Damn.” But missing two? TSA has given us nothing — no gas card, no donations. And now we have ICE coming in here.

They’re the reason that we’re not getting paid. And now I’m working next to that person. And they’re getting paid to do nothing. They’re not trained. It takes six months to train a Transportation Security Officer. They’ve received none of that. A tweet went out and the next day they’re at the airport walking around sipping coffees, holding on to their vest. They arrived on Monday, and now they’re hanging out in the break room doing nothing. They’re warming up their lunch. I don’t know what you’re hungry from — you didn’t do anything! We already have Federal Air Marshal police and Port Authority police, so there’s already ten armed officers at any given moment.

Why do you need your vest and gun to move a line? That’s weird. If police said they were going to come in and help you move a bag or a tray, I don’t think they’d come in riot gear. It’s gonna make anybody feel uncomfortable. Don’t you guys have ICE T-shirts? Don’t they have ICE polos?

There were a lot of cancellations, and flights were pushed to the next day. Nobody got sent home early on Monday. We still stayed there and maintained a presence. So you might be chilling on Monday, but Tuesday it was double the work. You’re going to work your ass off.

They were scared. I’ve helped individuals leaving here who have to make a connection for a flight to Spain or China. They’re like, “The news told us to be early so I pulled up at 4 a.m. and my flight is at 7 a.m.” They gave it three hours, but three hours is not enough. So what can they do? I had a couple yesterday where their flight got pushed and they saw the line and they asked me where the rental-car desk was. They said they were going to rent a car and drive to Nashville. I got them through the line. I’m only one person; that’s my daily good deed. But we can’t do that for everybody. Tuesday was one of the busiest days in a long time.

We don’t blame the public; they’ve been great. They’ve tried to give us so many gift cards, but we’re not allowed to take things like that.

I love the first flight out, but if your flight is at 7 a.m., then you have to come at 4 a.m. and everybody has the same idea. So you have to understand and prepare for that. Give it at least three hours.

Enough of us are showing up and we have a lot of technology — eventually the line is going to get moving. If you’re coming with a news camera crew at 9 or 10 a.m. and you’re like, “The line’s not here,” it’s because we’ve been working on it since 4 a.m. Once you get it chugging, it’s going to keep going, but you’ve gotta push the boulder first. Show up at 4 a.m. when it’s a standstill and the lines are going down the steps — that’s when it’s terrible.

I would say midafternoon, like 1 or 2 p.m. That’s when the majority of the staff is there.

Yeah, of course. I mean, at the end of the day, what’s going to happen? There’s gonna be less and less people coming into work. ICE is there, but it doesn’t make the line any shorter. They don’t make the machines move faster.

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