Category Archives for Airports.
ICE agents are now at 13 airports, but the deployment looks far more symbolic than operational: they cannot legally perform screening, and in many cases they appear to be standing near checkpoints while TSA lines still run for hours.
A woman was detained by immigration authorities at San Francisco International Airport late Sunday night, and video of the scene is now being widely miscast as part of the new ICE deployment to airport checkpoints. It was not
ICE agents are now showing up at airport checkpoints, but they are not the same as TSA screeners — ICE agents are law enforcement officers, while TSA checkpoint staff generally are not. That changes your rights.
There is one food airports should probably never be serving right before passengers board a plane, and somehow it keeps spreading: chili. Beans, sulfur, and changes in cabin pressure are already a bad combination at 30,000 feet, which makes airport chili counters and giant lounge bowls feel less like comfort food and more like a threat to everyone trapped in the cabin.
A single overheated circuit board was enough to ground flights across five Washington-area airports, forcing controllers to evacuate Potomac TRACON and exposing just how fragile the FAA’s aging infrastructure has become. The deeper problem, though, is not one smoking board — it is an air traffic control system where routine maintenance on old equipment was reportedly allowed to slide, making breakdowns like this far more likely.
President Trump says ICE can fix shutdown-driven TSA lines starting Monday by moving agents into airports, but federal law does not allow ICE to simply take over checkpoint screening. Even if he tried, pulling immigration agents into TSA roles would weaken airport security while doing little to solve the staffing and training problem that caused the lines in the first place.
TSA staffing is breaking down at some of the country’s biggest airports, with callouts reportedly topping 50% in at least one location and surging well above normal nationwide during the DHS shutdown. For travelers, that means brutal security lines and real risk of missed flights — but there are still a handful of ways to beat the worst of the chaos, from PreCheck and CLEAR to priority lanes, touchless screening, and knowing which shortcuts still work.
The FAA has now stepped in to stop the summer flight buildup at Chicago O’Hare, proposing a cap of 2,608 daily operations after airlines had scheduled roughly 3,038. Because United was trying to grow far more aggressively than American, a government freeze near 2025 levels would hit United hardest and effectively stop the carrier’s bid to overwhelm its rival in Chicago.
Security lines at Austin-Bergstrom stretched outside the terminal before dawn Friday, and plenty of travelers assumed the partial government shutdown was already disrupting screening. That wasn’t it. The real problem was a predictable surge from Spring Break and the tail end of South By Southwest colliding with slower TSA procedures and an agency that still does a poor job staffing for obvious spikes in demand.
Denver International Airport asked passengers to donate $10 and $20 grocery and gas gift cards for TSA screeners working through the partial government shutdown with their pay deferred. The problem is that federal ethics rules and TSA’s own code of conduct bar screeners from soliciting or accepting gifts from travelers – or airports – and changing the type of card or moving the dropoff point away from the checkpoint does not fix that. ❗DONATIONS NEEDED❗ Support the dedicated TSA employees working without pay by donating $10 and $20 grocery store and gas gift cards. Visa gift cards cannot be accepted. Drop off locations can be found at Final Approach cell phone lot and in the Jeppesen Terminal. pic.twitter.com/DZPs5gMuoV — Denver Int'l Airport (@DENAirport) March 11, 2026 Now, they’re (1) asking for grocery story and gas…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
