Rep. Rosa DeLauro blames GOP for airport chaos amid the Democrats’ DHS shutdown

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee is pinning the blame on Republicans for flight delays, hourslong jams at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints and the overall chaos at major airports across the U.S. — while her party blocks Department of Homeland Security funding.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said that both President Trump and Republican leadership are “responsible for the chaos at America’s airports,” calling on them to “stop their partisan games.”

Democrats are preventing DHS funding in protest of the Trump administration’s hardline Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics after the death of two U.S. citizens confronting ICE agents in Minneapolis. But as Americans begin to feel the negative effects at airports in week four of the funding lapse, there are no negotiations to break the impasse.

Ms. DeLauro said the mess at the airports would be solved by her legislation to fund TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other offices within the department.

Her bill omits funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection so that Democrats can continue to press their multifaceted demands to rein in federal immigration enforcement, including restricting where agents can make deportation arrests and forbidding them from wearing face-covering masks and mandating that they wear body cameras.

“Republican leadership is currently blocking my bill to fully fund TSA. If Speaker Johnson allowed my bill to receive a vote, we could resolve this issue immediately. Instead, they are choosing to hold TSA officers and Americans’ travel hostage to force Members of Congress to give even more money to ICE and CBP without the guardrails against abuse a vast majority of Americans want to see,” Ms. DeLauro said in a statement.

DHS has pinned the blame squarely on Democrats for travelers’ airport woes.

“Americans are now enduring the severe fallout from the Democrat shutdown of DHS. Today, travelers are facing TSA lines of up to nearly 3 hours long at some major airports, causing missed flights and massive delays during peak travel,” DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a recent statement.

She said that while Democrats are scoring political points in their efforts to protest federal immigration policies, they are “holding national security and everyday Americans hostage.”

Meanwhile, the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, has added new urgency to the DHS shutdown.

Republicans argue that if DHS remains shuttered, the U.S. is left vulnerable to counterattacks. But 10 days into the conflict, Democrats remain dug in against reopening DHS without significant changes to immigration enforcement.