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Travelers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport faced a hellish travel weekend, with TSA wait lines reportedly lasting nearly three hours because of the partial government shutdown.
Dizzying images from America’s busiest air hub shows the security lines extending into the baggage-claim section of the airport on both Saturday and Sunday, with estimated waiting times reaching 153 minutes, according to a traveler.
“The line is WRAPPING AROUND BAGGAGE CLAIM!!! THIS IS PURE INSANITY!!!!!!” Matt Van Swol wrote on X after arriving at the airport at 6 a.m.
The staggering long lines at the Georgia hub and other airports around the country triggered President Trump on Sunday to order Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to be deployed at airports to help clear them.
After TSA agents missed their first paycheck last week because of the funding shutdown, daily absentism among workers soared.
At Hartsfield-Jackson, that daily rate has reached as high as 40%, according to airport officials.
Along with the lack of staff, the airport was also hit with increased traffic over the weekend because of spring break, with about 350,000 passengers expected to travel through the Atlanta airport between Thursday and Sunday, WSBTV reported.
Tedi Zimmerman, who arrived four hours early at the airport for her flight to Florida on Saturday, told the outlet it was ridiculous for travelers to face such long wait times while politicians in Washington argue about funding.
“Get your act together,” she said. “There are priorities. This is one of them. This is crazy.”
The security-line hell also has resulted in wait times hitting nearly two hours at Houston’s George Bush International Airport in Texas and more than an hour at New York City’s JFK International Airport in Queens.
Even the TSA precheck line at JFK appeared to be at a standstill and stretched longer than the regular security checkpoint line, according to video of the chaos.
“Even before dawn breaks, the continuing travel mess spawned by the partial government shutdown is apparent,” Mary Murphy wrote on X of the 4:30 a.m. line.
Nearly two-hour-long lines awaited frustrated flyers attempting to reach their gates at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport on Sunday morning, too, with the queue in Terminal B stretching into the parking lot.
Trump had blamed the Democrats for the long lines, citing their disagreement on funding the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the TSA, without increased oversight on ICE.
It remains to be seen how ICE agents at US airports will help ease the long waits, as Border czar Tom Homan noted that his officers are not trained to do the jobs of TSA screeners.
Homan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that plans were being drawn up for ICE deployment Monday to help “TSA move lines along.”
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