TSA Administrator Warns Airports Might ‘Quite Literally Shutdown’ If Callout Rates Continue to Increase

Adam Stahl, Acting Deputy TSA Administrator, warned that airports could “quite literally shut down” if Congress cannot agree on funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Stahl spoke with Fox & Friends’ co-host Ainsley Earhardt on Tuesday about the negative repercussions of the ongoing partial government shutdown that began on Feb. 14 as TSA agents have been forced to work without pay.  To date, 366 TSA agents have already resigned, and callout rates are skyrocketing.

Earhardt asked Stahl if the TSA intends to call in retirees to aid with Spring break mayhem if the question of DHS funding is not resolved soon.

“Are you going to call in people that have been retired?” she asked. “How are we going to remedy this problem if we don’t get the government [DHS] funded?”

Stahl explained that the group is already “stretched” to its limits with no alternatives left but to receive funding and pay TSA agents.

“We’re doing absolutely everything we can,” Stahl asserted, adding:

We have a National Deployment Office force. We have fully depleted that. At this point, we’re fully stretched. Frankly, there’s not much else we can do. As the weeks continue, if this continues, it’s not hyperbole to suggest that we may have to quite literally shut down airports, particularly smaller ones, if callout rates go up and we can’t — a lot of the officers can’t afford to come in.

I talked to one officer this week who is a single mother. She has a special needs child. She can’t afford to pay for her special needs child’s child care. Again, I believe it’s frankly unconscionable that we have Senate Democrats that are playing, that are holding our folks’ financial livelihood hostage over political games, political partisanship, so we really need to get back to normal order.

He stressed that TSA employees are now facing “dire financial straits.”

“These are individuals living, like many Americans, paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “This is the third shutdown over the past six months. We have individuals sleeping in their cars. Some individuals also are drawing blood to afford to pay for gas to get to work. Again, these are dire impacts to our officers financially. This will have knockdown effects also long term to attrition and recruitment. We saw an uptick of 25 percent attrition after the last shutdown. This will continue to worsen, not get better, if we don’t get a resumption of normal operations, DHS funded and money back into our TSA officers’ pockets.”

The Trump administration has dubbed this the “Democrats’ Reckless DHS Shutdown.” Democrats like Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have snapped back at these claims, with Schumer furiously dismissing claims that GOP senators had reached out to discuss a DHS funding deal just last week.

Watch above via Fox News.

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