Why TSA agents aren’t getting paid right now — and what it will take to change that
By Bryan Metzger FollowFollow Bryan MetzgerEvery time Bryan publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!Enter your emailSign upBy clicking “Sign up”, you agree to receive emails from Business Insider. In addition, you accept Insider’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
TSA agents have been working without pay for the last month as the result of a partial government shutdown. Annabelle GORDON / AFP
The full list of Democrats’ demands is as follows:
Targeted enforcement.DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant. End indiscriminate arrests and improve warrant procedures and standards. Require verification that a person is not a US citizen before holding them in immigration detention.
No masks Prohibit ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing masks and other face coverings.
Require ID Require DHS officers conducting immigration enforcement to display their agency, unique ID number and last name. Require them to verbalize their ID number and last name if asked.
Protect sensitive location Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, childcare facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.
Stop racial profiling Prohibit DHS officers from conducting stops, questioning and searches based on an individual’s presence at certain locations, their job, their spoken language and accent, or their race or ethnicity.
Uphold use-of-force standards Place into law a reasonable use-of-force policy, expand training and require certification of officers. In the case of an incident, the officer must be removed from the field until an investigation is concluded.
Ensure state and local coordination and oversight Preserve the ability of state and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute potential crimes and use-of-excessive-force incidents. Require that evidence is preserved and shared with jurisdictions. Require the consent of states and localities to conduct large-scale operations outside of targeted immigration enforcement.
Build safeguards into the system Make clear that all buildings where people are detained must abide by the same basic detention standards that require immediate access to a person’s attorney to prevent citizen arrests or detention. Allow states to sue the DHS for violations of all requirements. Prohibit limitations on member visits to ICE facilities regardless of how those facilities are funded.
Body cameras for accountability, not tracking Require use of body-worn cameras when interacting with the public and mandate requirements for the storage and access of footage. Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in first amendment activities.
No paramilitary police Regulate and standardize the type of uniforms and equipment DHS officers employ during enforcement operations to bring them in line with civil enforcement.
Below is a UK article about what happens when Met Police ‘mistakenly’ recruit thugs into the police force, (but Holman chooses these people to be their enforcers and that is why Democrats are holding up ICE funding) :
Failure to properly vet officers resulted in serial rapists within Met ranks, review finds
This article is more than 2 months old
Abandoning checks on staff and officers was ‘a dereliction of the Met’s duty to keep London safe’, says home secretary
Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondentThu 8 Jan 2026 00.01 GMTShare
Serial rapists including David Carrick were left in the ranks of the Metropolitan police because of a failure to carry out necessary vetting on thousands of officers and staff, it has been revealed.
An internal review by the force found it had lowered vetting checks into the backgrounds of prospective and existing police officers and staff between 2013 and 2023.
The Home Office said the Met estimated that more than 5,000 officers and staff were recruited without the right checks. It has been unable to confirm if pre-employment checks were carried out on around 17,000 officers and staff.
The Guardian revealed last September that approximately 300 new recruits may have had substandard or no vetting. But the Met’s report found that 1,400 officers who should have been flagged by vetting were left in the force with police powers.
The Met found evidence that 131 officers committed criminal or misconduct offences, ranging from rape to drug offences, hate crimes and lower levels infractions such as being intoxicated on duty.
Among those who joined or stayed in the force because of defective vetting was Cliff Mitchell, hired despite an unproven child rape allegation and later convicted of 10 counts of rape, including three of raping a child under the age of 13.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, commissioned HM chief inspector of constabulary to inspect the Met’s recruitment and vetting practices.
“Abandoning vetting checks on officers was a dereliction of the Met’s duty to keep London safe,” she said. “Londoners rightly expect officers to undergo robust checks so that the brightest and best – not criminals – are policing our streets.”
The defective vetting allowed some to join the Met who should not have, while others who were revetted were allowed to stay in when they should have been removed.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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