Budget paralysis | Disruptions are increasing at the country’s airports

(Washington) The US Department of Homeland Security is preparing to cross the symbolic threshold of a month of budgetary paralysis on Friday, with no end in sight and ever-increasing disruptions at the country’s airports.

Since February 14, funding for the DHS – the department responsible in particular for security checks at airports – has been frozen due to the deep dispute between Democrats and Republicans in Congress over the practices of the immigration police (ICE).

Due to this partial “shutdown”, thousands of federal civil servants have been placed on technical unemployment, while thousands of others, in functions considered essential, continue to work. In both cases, their salaries will not be paid until lawmakers agree on a budget for DHS, on which ICE depends.

Friday also marks the first zero pay slip since the start of the blockage for officials of the agency responsible for security checks at airports (TSA).

“Irresponsible”

Faced with this situation, some prefer to call in sick rather than work with a frozen paycheck. More than 300 TSA agents have resigned since the start of the shutdown, DHS said Thursday.

The result has been an impressive lengthening of queues to board planes for several days.

At the airport in Austin, Texas, the line was already extending outside the building at 5:30 a.m. Friday, according to images from a journalist from local channel KXAN.

The DHS, whose secretary Kristi Noem was fired last week by Donald Trump, denounced the Democratic opposition for this “irresponsible shutdown” in a message on X on Friday.

“Democrats’ political gamesmanship is turning spring break travel into a NIGHTMARE,” the department criticized.

Donald Trump also virulently attacked the opposition which, according to him, wants to do “the complete opposite” of what he wants.

“No matter what I say, they go to the opposite because they are sick, deranged people,” declared the American president in an interview broadcast Friday by Fox News radio.

Minneapolis

But the Democrats point to the fact that they have proposed voting for funding for DHS agencies apart from ICE, while waiting for negotiations on reforms to this immigration police to be successful.

“For the second time in less than a week, Republicans said no,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday.

“The Democrats are ready to fund” these agencies, “the Republicans are preventing it,” he added.

Democratic opposition to ICE practices only grew after the deaths within weeks of each other in January of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two Americans shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

They have since called for significant measures to restrict its ability to act, in particular the obligation to obtain a judicial warrant before any arrest of a migrant.

“Democrats just want ICE to behave like any other police agency in the United States, to use warrants and not wear hoods,” Chuck Schumer said Thursday in the chamber.

The budgetary paralysis of the DHS represents the third “shutdown” since the start of Donald Trump’s second term after that of a few days at the beginning of February, already around the question of ICE, and that of last October-November, which broke a longevity record with 43 days of blockage.