told CNN Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cAs the weeks continue, our TSA officers, as long as they don\u2019t get paid, they\u2019re going to continue to call out, they can\u2019t afford to come in, and they\u2019re going to quit altogether.\u201d\n <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s the latest cascading effect of the monthlong lapse in funding for DHS. Democrats and Republicans are at a standstill in a fight over immigration reform.\n <\/p>\n
\n TSA workers won\u2019t see another paycheck for work during the shutdown until the department reopens. Union leaders say some TSA workers quit, and many others have taken unscheduled time off since they can\u2019t afford gas or child care needed to go to work.\n <\/p>\n
\n More than a third of the TSA staff at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International didn\u2019t show up on Wednesday and more than half of the TSA workers at Houston\u2019s Hobby Airport didn\u2019t come to work last Friday, but those huge hubs are not likely to be at risk of closing because of how much passenger traffic they draw.\n <\/p>\n
\n It comes down to prioritizing, said John Pistole, former TSA administrator under the Obama administration.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf I was still the administrator, what I would be asking for are the passenger loads on a daily and weekly basis, and just really look at those and then what the staffing levels are,\u201d Pistole said, noting that determinations would be made based on how busy certain airports are.\n <\/p>\n
\n TSA has not stopped all screening at any airport so far during the shutdown, and experts say they will exhaust every other possible option before they do.\n <\/p>\n
\n At Philadelphia International Airport, three of the seven checkpoints were closed Wednesday \u201cto help optimize operations,\u201d the airport said. All gates are accessible from any checkpoint but may require longer walks.\n <\/p>\n
\n TSA regularly operates a National Deployment Force of screeners who volunteer to be sent to airports that have staff shortages, but Stahl said they have been fully depleted.\n <\/p>\n
\n In more extreme scenarios, larger airports could pull officers from smaller airports nearby to keep screening going at the big terminals, said Keith Jeffries, former federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport and current vice president of K2 Security Screening Group.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhat (Stahl is) saying, in my opinion, is if staffing shortages continue, staffing will be pulled from smaller airports to staff the larger airports to keep the transportation system from fully,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Airports that stay open with limited staffing will see wait times continue to surge, Pistole said. Screening procedures like pat downs could also pose problems if there isn\u2019t enough staff of a particular sex.\n <\/p>\n
\n Airport closures due to a lack of TSA staff are not something the organizations who operate terminals across the country expect will happen, a source familiar with airport operations told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cMaybe longer wait times but not closing of airports,\u201d the source said. \u201cAt the same time, airports will never compromise security standards.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Ultimately, Jeffries said, the talk about closing an airport should be a warning for passengers and Congress how bad things could get if action isn\u2019t taken soon.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe reality of the situation is this is going to get worse before it gets better, if we don\u2019t see any sort of action,\u201d Stahl said.\n <\/p>\n
\n CNN\u2019s Pete Muntean contributed to this report.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The stalemate in Washington, DC over funding the Department of Homeland Security has led to hourslong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-532034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}