Even if the partial government shutdown ends soon, the fallout at the Transportation Security Administration could spill into the summer’s marquee event.
In a House testimony on Wednesday, acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said that so many officers have quit since their pay stopped in mid-February that the agency can’t get replacements fast enough to adequately staff airports ahead of the World Cup in June.
She said TSA officers spend four to six months in training before working checkpoints, but the games — which will take place across 16 cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico — start in just 80 days.
“This is a dire situation,” she said, adding that more than 480 officers have quit so far. “We are facing a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers at our airports.”
TSA agents haven’t been paid for nearly six weeks, yet are deemed “essential” and expected to work during the shutdown, with back pay promised afterward. Their annual pay starts at around $40,000 and averages $60,000 to $75,000 a year with experience.
Still, many live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to work unpaid for months at a time — quitting and finding another job or doing gig work is often their best option.
Mass TSA agent quits and callouts amid the shutdown, compounded by peak spring break travel, have already created hourslong security lines and stranded travelers. It’s a preview of the chaos that could repeat when an estimated 6 million fans descend on potentially understaffed airports for the World Cup.
“If we see any spikes [in attrition], we’re going to have to pivot and assess how we are going to staff the FIFA locations adequately,” McNeill said.
Passengers traveling to the scheduled World Cup games in San Francisco and Kansas City, however, are likely safe from staffing chaos.
Both city airports use private security officers employed by contract companies instead of TSA, meaning their agents are being paid despite the shutdown.
It’s not just the TSA sounding the alarm
Former Republican Sen. from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin — who was confirmed as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday after Kristi Noem’s ousting in early March — said in a Senate hearing last week that the US is “behind” on World Cup preparations and the shutdown is making it worse.
“It’ll take four months once funding comes in to start replacing those that we’ve lost for training before we can get them out in the field; we don’t have four months with FIFA,” he said. “How do we expect these people to stay on the job and work? We’re losing institutional knowledge, we’re losing people we’ve already trained.”
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images
The mass quits are exacerbating a problem that was already flagged last year.
A February 2025 report from the US Travel Association — long before the shutdown’s impact could be factored in — warned that the TSA may not be efficient enough to handle surging travel volumes during the World Cup.
On its busiest days, the agency screened about 3 million passengers. During the games, the organization said that level of traffic would be the norm.
Lawmakers are still negotiating a funding deal to reopen DHS and end the partial shutdown.
