About 35 TSA officers have quit New England airports amid DHS shutdown
About 35 TSA airport security officers have walked off the job in New England because they are not being paid due to the ongoing partial government shutdown, their union said.
Most TSA employees fly out of Boston’s Logan International Airport, and their numbers increased after last week’s paycheck was missed due to a lack of funds, according to Mike Gayzagian, president of AFGE TSA Local 2617. The union represents Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers in New England.
“If you don’t have resources to spare — and most people don’t — you have to find a way to earn income, and if you have to take another job and that conflicts with the schedule you have at the agency, then you’ll go to the job that will pay you,” Gayzagian said in a March 19 interview.
The shutdown forced 50,000 TSA agents across the United States to work without pay last month, and 10% of them did not come to work on March 15. As of March 17, 366 TSA agents have left the force, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
“Everyone has their own financial clock and, you know, it’s going to get ugly,” Gayzagian said. “The majority of them are living paycheck to paycheck.”
A Transportation Security Administration gate is closed at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, February 14, 2026.
Several TSA employees also left their jobs at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut, and TF Green International Airport in Rhode Island “may have one,” Gayzagian said. Airports in Maine and Vermont also saw officers quit, he said, but not Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire.
The federal government has been partially shut down since Feb. 14 after lawmakers failed to agree on DHS funding and immigration enforcement changes following the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents in Minnesota.
“We missed a paycheck and a half, and we’re probably going to miss another one if they don’t come to an agreement by next Friday,” Gayzagian said. “And people now have to choose whether or not they can keep their jobs.”
He explained that more New England TSA employees resigned during the last shutdown than during the full shutdown in October 2025, because the two occurred in rapid succession.
“[October] It was their first quitting experience, and they didn’t like it. And now suddenly they’re doing it again – now they really don’t like it. So people have decided that the government is no longer a reliable employer, and that’s a tragedy,” Gayzagian said.
Airports say they have yet to face significant impacts
Spokespeople for Boston’s Logan International Airport, Hartford’s Bradley International Airport and New Hampshire’s Manchester-Boston Regional Airport said there are currently no operational impacts due to the closure.
“At this time, we are not seeing any staffing issues and we will notify the public if we begin to do so,” said Benjamin Crawley, a spokesman for Massport in Boston.
Logan Airport is testing the use of cameras to track passengers through TSA security lines to provide more accurate wait time estimates. However, Crawley said the initiative “started some time ago” and is not related to the government shutdown.
Patrick Leahy International Airport in Burlington, Vermont, and Portland International Airport, Maine, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The TSA also did not respond.
Gayzagian said that as time passes without paychecks, more TSA agents are likely to leave and the administration will have to hire more employees — with less experience.
“You start to lose experienced people. The agents who have been there a long time know the airports and understand what is not normal,” he said. “This creates a security situation because [new hires] I haven’t been around long enough to know what’s not normal and what’s wrong. »
Gayzagian called on lawmakers to pass a DHS funding bill and end the government shutdown.
“In New England alone, we have 12 senators and 21 representatives. That’s a lot of political power, right? And if they wanted to, they could end it. They could end it tomorrow, but they don’t, and they’re hurting their constituents,” Gayzagian said.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Stop tension rises as TSA officers leave New England airports.
