Desperate TSA officers being forced to go without a paycheck have started selling their blood and sleeping in their cars just to make ends meet — as disruptions caused by the ongoing Homeland Security shutdown continue to wreak havoc at airports.
Some agents have taken the dire steps as they prepare to go yet another week without a paycheck, according to acting Deputy TSA Administrator Adam Stahl.
“We got folks sleeping in cars,” Stahl said at Washington’s Reagan National Airport on Tuesday, Fox News reported.
He added that others have even resorted to having their “blood drawn to afford gas to come to work.”
“I talked to a single mother recently who has a 3-year-old child with special needs and can’t afford to pay for childcare for that 3-year-old child,” Stahl continued.
Others across the country have revealed they are having to rely on food banks, going without medical care and digging into their savings in order to survive — as the partial shutdown enters its 40th day Wednesday.
“I never thought I would be in a position where, working for the federal government, I would need to go to a food bank to supplement my groceries,” said Taylor Desert, who works at Indianapolis International Airport.
“I don’t want to have to spend my entire savings just to afford to keep living.”
Oksana and Deron Kelly, a married couple who both work as TSA agents at Orlando International Airport, said they’ll have to beg relatives for help or take out a loan so they can support their two young children.
“It’s very mentally exhausting,” Kelly said. “How do we even decide between being able to feed our kids or come to work?”
Her husband has been picking up DoorDash delivery shifts in his spare time so the family can scrape by.
As tens of thousands of officers continue to go without paychecks, high absentee rates are now piling up at some major airports — resulting in hours-long lines and frustrated passengers at understaffed security checkpoints.
Travelers were forced to endure agonizing TSA security wait times of up to four hours at Houston’s airport first thing Wednesday as disruptions caused by the ongoing Homeland Security shutdown continued to wreak havoc at transit hubs.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport was reporting wait times of between three to four hours before 9 a.m., according to its website.
Security delays at LaGuardia Airport — the scene of a deadly Air Canada plane crash Sunday night that has shutdown an entire runway as the feds investigate — were at least two hours long.
It comes as Ha McNeill, a top TSA official, was slated to tell a US House committee Wednesday that 460 TSA officers have quit since the start of the current funding dispute and that absences have spiked to more than 10% in recent days amid the spring break travel surge.
With Post wires and David DeTurris