DHS Shutdown: Causes, Airport Chaos, and How It Ended

The 2026 DHS shutdown was a 76-day partial funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security that ran from February 14 to April 30, 2026, making it the longest shutdown of a federal department in United States history. It began after the Senate refused to advance a House-passed DHS spending bill without new restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it ended when Congress agreed to fund most of DHS through regular appropriations while leaving ICE and Border Patrol to be funded later through budget reconciliation. More than 260,000 department employees were affected, and the most visible public consequence was the near-collapse of airport security screening at major hubs.¹

What Caused the Shutdown

DHS funding expired at midnight on February 14, 2026. The House had passed a full-year DHS appropriations bill, H.R. 7147, on January 22, 2026, by a vote of 220–207, but the measure stalled in the Senate. Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, refused to advance it without what they called “common-sense guardrails” on ICE enforcement operations.¹

Two Democratic conditions were central. The first would have barred federal immigration agents from wearing masks during enforcement operations. The second would have required agents to obtain judicial warrants before entering private homes. Representative Hakeem Jeffries described the provisions as “essential.”² Democrats also floated proposals to fund all of DHS except ICE, CBP, and the secretary’s office, arguing that TSA workers should not go unpaid over an unrelated immigration fight.³

Republicans called the ICE restrictions “nonstarters.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued Democrats could not refuse to fund an agency while demanding new constraints on it. President Trump added his own demand, insisting no deal could proceed without the SAVE America Act, a voter-ID measure the House had passed on February 11 that would require states to share voter rolls with DHS for verification.⁴ Trump urged Congress to “lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!” and called for ending the Senate filibuster.³

Senate Democrats blocked all-DHS funding bills at least five times. Republicans, in turn, rejected Democratic proposals for partial funding. Congress left for a two-week Passover and Easter recess on March 27 without a deal.⁵

Who Was Affected

The lapse touched every major DHS component: TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, CISA, the Secret Service, ICE, and CBP. Under DHS lapse procedures, employees were split into “excepted” personnel required to work without pay and furloughed employees sent home. At CISA, roughly 800 employees — about 40 percent of staff — were designated excepted and continued working unpaid.⁶

House Speaker Mike Johnson estimated that roughly 120,000 DHS employees, including 50,000 TSA agents, were going without pay. Union leaders reported that workers were unable to afford gas or childcare, and some resorted to food banks.⁷ The administration used leftover funds from a prior reconciliation law to keep paying some law enforcement officers at ICE and CBP, but thousands of civilians at those agencies still went unpaid. One CBP employee estimated that around 9,000 civilians at that agency alone were working without pay.⁶

DHS’s biweekly payroll ran $1.6 billion, and stopgap funding sources were expected to run dry after the first pay period in May 2026.⁸

Airport Chaos

The most visible public consequence unfolded at airports. Most TSA officers were classified as excepted and required to work without pay, and by March 13 more than 300 had resigned. By March 26 that number approached 500, and the national callout rate hit a record 11.83 percent that day.⁹ Callout rates at individual airports were far higher: 42 percent at New Orleans Louis Armstrong International, 41.5 percent at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, and 37 percent at New York JFK.¹⁰

Wait times ballooned. By March 9, lines at Houston’s William P. Hobby Airport exceeded three hours, and the airport advised travelers to arrive four to five hours early. By March 22, lines at Hartsfield-Jackson wrapped around baggage claim and extended outside the terminal. At least four major airports stopped publishing estimated wait times entirely.⁹

On February 22, DHS suspended Global Entry and TSA PreCheck to conserve resources. The PreCheck suspension was reversed within hours, and Global Entry was restored on March 11. Congressional escorts at airports were suspended the same day.⁹

Beginning March 23, the Trump administration deployed ICE agents to 13 major airports to help with crowd control, ID checks, and monitoring of security lines. The agents were not trained on magnetometers or X-ray machines and were limited to entrances and exits.¹⁰ White House border czar Tom Homan said they would stay until airports were “100 percent” functional.⁵ The ACLU condemned the deployment, saying, “Never in our history has a president deployed armed agents to the airport to inspire fear among families.”

Other Ripple Effects

Beyond airports, FEMA operations in non-disaster areas were curtailed. Some FEMA staff were paid through the Disaster Relief Fund, but permanent full-time employees went unpaid.⁶ DHS websites went unmanaged starting February 17.¹¹

Preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, scheduled across 11 U.S. cities from June 11 to July 19, were also hit. The shutdown delayed release of $625 million in FEMA security grants Congress had approved for host cities. Officials in Miami and Kansas City warned that the missing federal funds could force cuts to fan events, and Kansas City cited unfunded police overtime and mutual aid needs. Congressman Michael McCaul warned the delay threatened intelligence sharing among law enforcement fusion centers.¹²¹³¹⁴

Trump’s Emergency Pay Actions

As the shutdown dragged on, President Trump moved unilaterally on pay. On March 27, he signed a memorandum directing DHS to restore pay to TSA employees using funds with a “reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations.”¹⁵

On April 3, the 49th day of the shutdown, Trump issued a broader memorandum titled “Liberating the Department of Homeland Security From the Democrat-Caused Shutdown.” It ordered the Secretary of Homeland Security, together with the Office of Management and Budget, to “use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to the functions of DHS to provide each and every employee of DHS with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the shutdown.” The memorandum cited 31 U.S.C. 1301(a) and characterized the shutdown as an “emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”¹⁶ It included a standard disclaimer that it created no enforceable rights.¹⁷

The order brought furloughed employees back and provided back pay for work performed since February 14. Officials warned the underlying funds would run out after the first pay period in May.⁸

A New Secretary in the Middle of the Crisis

The shutdown played out alongside a change at the top of DHS. On March 5, 2026, President Trump fired Secretary Kristi Noem after she testified before a Senate panel that Trump had personally approved a $220 million DHS advertising campaign on immigration enforcement. Trump denied any knowledge, telling Reuters, “I never knew anything about” it. Noem was reassigned to a new role as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.”¹⁸ She had also faced bipartisan criticism over ICE enforcement tactics and FEMA response, with Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski publicly demanding her resignation in January.¹⁹

Trump nominated Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her. Mullin was confirmed on March 23 by a 54–45 Senate vote. During his hearing he apologized for previously calling Alex Pretti, a man fatally shot by federal agents in south Minneapolis in January, “a deranged individual,” saying he had “responded immediately without the facts.” He also pledged not to interfere with the DHS Inspector General and vowed to restructure rather than eliminate FEMA.²⁰

How the Shutdown Ended

The breakthrough came by separating the ICE fight from the rest of DHS funding. On March 27, the Senate passed a bipartisan DHS funding bill by unanimous voice vote that covered most of the department but excluded ICE and portions of CBP. The House initially rejected the split, then converged with the Senate in late April. On April 29, the House voted 215–211 to adopt a Senate budget resolution, clearing the path for the final deal.²¹²²²³

The bill appropriated $48 billion for covered DHS agencies, funding TSA, the Coast Guard ($13.9 billion), FEMA, CISA, the Secret Service, and other components through the end of fiscal year 2026. It included a 20 percent increase for the DHS Office of Inspector General and restored funding for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. It also directed DHS to implement a standard uniform policy ensuring federal law enforcement personnel are clearly identifiable, a response to the masking dispute that had driven the shutdown.²⁴

Critically, the bill did not fund ICE or CBP’s Border Patrol. Speaker Mike Johnson described the split as a way to ensure immigration enforcement funding would flow “with no crazy Democrat reforms.”²⁵

What Happened to ICE and Border Patrol Funding

ICE and Border Patrol were handled separately through budget reconciliation, which allowed Republicans to bypass the Senate filibuster. The measure, titled the Secure America Act (Senate Bill 2), provided nearly $70 billion for immigration enforcement through fiscal year 2029.²⁶

The package allocated roughly $38.5 billion for ICE (including $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement operations), $22.6 billion for Border Patrol, $3.5 billion for border security technology, and $5 billion in discretionary funds for the DHS Secretary. It did not include requirements for judicial warrants, restrictions on officer masking, or mandates for body cameras — the conditions Democrats had sought throughout the shutdown.²⁶²⁷

The reconciliation bill passed the Senate 52–47 and the House 214–212 on June 9, 2026. President Trump signed it the following day.²⁷²⁸

1
Congress.gov. H.R. 7147 – Homeland Security and Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026
2
The New York Times. Trump News
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Politico. DHS Shutdown Deal Pressure
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Brennan Center for Justice. New SAVE Act Bills Would Still Block Millions of Americans From Voting
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BBC News. DHS Shutdown Reaches Record Length
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Federal News Network. Overlooked DHS Staff Sound Off on Shutdown
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Federal News Network. Federal Employee Unions Call for an End to DHS Shutdown
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GovExec. DHS Again to Stop Paying Employees as Shutdown Continues
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CNN. TSA Shutdown Over Airports Wait Times
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NBC News. ICE Agents Deployed to Airports Amid DHS Shutdown
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Department of Homeland Security. One Week Into DHS Shutdown, DHS Implements Emergency Measures
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NBC DFW. DHS Shutdown FIFA World Cup Planning Concern
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Politico. DHS Shutdown Disrupts World Cup Planning
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NPR. Lawmakers Express Concerns About World Cup Prep Amid Ongoing DHS Shutdown
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The Guardian. DHS Longest Partial Government Shutdown
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The White House. Liberating the Department of Homeland Security From the Democrat-Caused Shutdown
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The Guardian. Trump Executive Order on DHS Pay During Partial Shutdown
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CNBC. Trump Fires Kristi Noem, Taps Markwayne Mullin for DHS
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Axios. Kristi Noem Reassigned From DHS
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GovExec. Mullin Confirmed to Lead DHS as Shutdown Drags and 100,000 Employees Remain Unpaid
21
National League of Cities. The Longest DHS Shutdown Is Putting America’s Cities at Risk
22
The White House. Congressional Bill H.R. 7147 Signed Into Law
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Courthouse News Service. House Unanimously Passes DHS Funding Bill Ending 76-Day Shutdown
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Congressman Ed Case. DHS Funding Bill Summary
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Federal News Network. House Approves Bill to Fund DHS and End the Record Shutdown
26
Time. House Passes Secure America Act Reconciliation Bill Funding Immigration Enforcement
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NPR. House Reconciliation Vote on Immigration Enforcement Funding
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The Hill. Reconciliation ICE Border Patrol Funding