The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 41 days. Five hundred TSA officers have quit. Thousands more are calling out because — and I cannot stress this enough — they are not getting paid. Airport wait times hit four and a half hours this week. Lines are stretching into parking lots. People are missing flights in their own country. Spring break travelers are learning what it feels like to be processed like cattle, which is ironic given that processing people is supposedly what this whole fight is about.
The Senate finally passed a bill last night to fund most of DHS and get these workers paid. The House GOP killed it this morning. Why? Because the bill didn’t include money for ICE and border patrol. Lisa McClain called it “garbage.” So the plan is clear: they will let every airport in America descend into chaos, let working people go without paychecks for a sixth straight week, and hold the entire transportation system hostage — until they get funding to deport more people. That’s the priority. Not the 61,000 federal workers keeping your airports running. Not you, standing in a four-hour line at Hartsfield-Jackson wondering if your flight to see your mom is even going to happen. The priority is making sure ICE gets its money.
Nobody should be flying to the US right now, and honestly? If you live there, good luck flying anywhere at all. The cruelty isn’t a side effect. It’s the whole product.