MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Security screeners at most U.S. airports are finally getting paid.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
TSA officers have started receiving their first payments since the Homeland Security shutdown began more than 40 days ago. But the shutdown has not ended, and when agents will be paid next is still unclear.
MARTIN: NPR's Joel Rose is with us now with the latest. Good morning, Joel.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what do we know about these payments?
ROSE: Well, we know they started hitting the bank accounts of many TSA screeners yesterday, and that is some relief for the roughly 50,000 TSA security officers who had been working without pay since funding lapsed more than six weeks ago. I talked last night with Johnny Jones. He's a leader with the union that represents TSA workers.
JOHNNY JONES: The employees are happy they're receiving some money, right? There's a sense of relief there because most people's bank accounts were negative by the time they got this payment.
ROSE: But at the same time, Jones says there is still a lot of anxiety and concern. These screeners still have not gotten the full amount that they were owed. DHS says most screeners have been paid for the two full paychecks they missed, but they have not been paid yet for part of a third missed paycheck. DHS says it is working aggressively to process that one.
MARTIN: Where is the money coming from to pay these officers?
ROSE: It's a good question. President Trump signed a memo last week ordering Homeland Security to find the money to pay TSA workers after Congress repeatedly failed to reach a deal to fund the department. Lawmakers have disagreed over calls for tighter restrictions on immigration enforcement after Homeland Security officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. But that said, we still don't know exactly where the money is coming from. A lot of the Trump administration's critics are wondering if it is even legal for the White House to do this, and if it is legal, why didn't it happen sooner?
Thousands of TSA officers have called out of work since the shutdown began. Many have picked up second jobs, leading to some of the longest security lines in the agency's history, but we still don't know when those security screeners will get paid next. And of course, none of this helps other DHS staff who are still not getting paid as the shutdown continues, including staffers at FEMA and at the Coast Guard.
MARTIN: Oh, that's a good point. There are still people who are not getting paid at all. OK, to those security lines. Are those long lines now behind us?
ROSE: Well, the initial signs are good. Security lines were generally much shorter on Monday - closer to normal. But the fallout from this episode is likely not totally over yet. I talked to Caleb Harmon-Marshall. He is a former TSA security officer who now writes a newsletter called Gate Access.
CALEB HARMON-MARSHALL: TSA as a whole is going to have a huge problem once this is all over and done, with, you know, trying to get new candidates to come and work this job.
ROSE: You know, more than 500 TSA officers have quit during this shutdown, according to DHS.
MARTIN: Joel, one thing people were wondering is why some airports had long lines and not others? Do you know?
ROSE: I've wondered that, too. I mean, we tended to see the longest lines at airports where there was a high volume of travel that day, combined with a high percentage of callouts at TSA, which sometimes hit 40% or more. I talked yesterday to a former high-ranking TSA officer at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, which had four-hour security lines at times over the past month. He requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. He told me Houston has always been a tough labor market for TSA, and that when the oil and gas industry was doing well, his workforce would often quit and take jobs there. So maybe that was a factor this time in Houston. But why did we see such high callouts at other airports in places like Atlanta, in New York, in New Orleans, in Baltimore? I don't know if we're ever going to know.
MARTIN: That is NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose. Joel, thank you.
ROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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