Skipped meals, eviction notices and repo’d cars: TSA workers desperately await checks after Trump and Senate push for funding

By Elizabeth Wolfe, Taylor Galgano, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — Last week, Tatiana Finlay was forced to borrow gas money from her 15-year-old daughter. This week, she began rationing food so her three children could eat.

“I’ve been skipping meals just hoping to stretch that dollar, because I want to make sure that they have the food,” said Finlay.

So she is often hungry when she arrives at the Orlando International Airport, where she works alongside other Transportation Security Administration officers who she says have been handed eviction notices, had their cars repossessed and been unable to afford their daily medication.

Falling back on her family has not been an option, she said. Her husband and both of her parents-in-law also work for the agency.

Her family is among the approximately 61,000 essential TSA employees who are anxious to see how quickly they can be paid after a six-week congressional stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security has forced them to work without pay.

Officers may soon get relief after President Donald Trump ordered DHS to pay TSA officers in a memo Friday. TSA workers should start receiving paychecks as early as Monday, DHS said in a statement.

Additionally, the Senate unanimously voted to fund most of the DHS, including TSA, though House Republicans rejected the measure and will vote on a short-term bill that funds the entire department.

Finlay and other TSA officers tell CNN they have become increasingly desperate for this financial relief. Their families have been buried under a mountain of unpaid bills, debt and accruing fees that have resulted from missing two full paychecks.

“Desperation isn’t even the word for it. It’s more like suffocation,” said Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ TSA Council 100.

Even if they are paid soon, some officers say their financial hardships will continue. It is not easy to reverse the ramifications of eviction, accumulating debt or ruined credit.

“There is some relief hearing that things may be moving in the right direction,” Finlay said Friday morning. “But there are still a lot of unknowns.”

Another year, another shutdown

When DHS funding lapsed on February 14, prompting a partial government shutdown, some TSA workers realized they would have few avenues for financial relief. Many had already drained their savings and exhausted loan options late last year, during another government shutdown that became the longest in American history.

“Last year we ended up just getting by taking (out) loans. This year, it’s not an option for us,” Finlay said.

Finlay and her husband are still paying off that loan, she said, and they do not qualify to take out another so soon. They were also granted mortgage forbearance during last year’s shutdown, making them ineligible to request it now.

“Even if you have savings, eventually your savings run out, which is where myself and my husband find ourselves right now,” she said.

Nearly 500 TSA employees have quit since the start of the partial shutdown and thousands have been calling out of work each day as they struggle to afford gas, child care, food and housing, according to DHS.

As the DHS shutdown stretches on, some employees have resorted to extreme measures to get by.

“Officers are reportedly sleeping in their cars at airports to save gas money, selling their blood and plasma, and taking on second and third jobs to make ends meet, all while expected to perform at the highest level when in uniform to protect the traveling public,” acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said during a House Oversight hearing Wednesday.

Among those struggling is Devin Rayford, who spoke to CNN Thursday outside the public utility Memphis Light, Gas and Water in Tennessee, where he had come to present his furlough letter in hopes of getting an extension on his bills.

After his shift at the Memphis International Airport, Rayford has been driving for Lyft and Uber to try to keep up with his expenses. He has struggled to find the time to spend with his 16-year-old daughter.

“It actually is demoralizing,” he said. “It’s terrible and it’s hard, especially having to explain it to your child or your family or significant other.”

Rayford serves as the president of the local TSA union covering Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina, and spends his hourlong drive to work fielding calls from concerned officers. He has dipped into union funds and his own pockets to try to help colleagues.

He estimates about half of his colleagues haven’t been showing up for work at his airport lately. During a recent spring break rush, he said he was responsible for covering three positions at the same time.

CNN reached out to the airport and DHS to ask if agents are covering multiple posts at the same time. The airport referred CNN to DHS, which provided statements from DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis on Trump’s efforts to pay TSA workers and send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into airports to assist them.

“I want to thank President Trump for his leadership in finding a way to pay our TSA officers to end this chaos at our airports. These hours long lines and thousands of Americans missing their flights was caused solely by the Democrats reckless DHS government shutdown,” Mullin said. Bis said TSA is “extremely grateful” for ICE’s assistance and said “the more support we have available, the more efficiently TSA can focus on their highly specialized screening roles to efficiently get airport security lines moving faster.”

CNN has followed up for further information.

Even as workers reach a breaking point, many still feel ashamed to seek help from food banks or family, Finlay said.

“It’s the embarrassment that you end up feeling as an individual because you are employed and not getting paid,” Finlay said. “As an adult, you think, ‘How can I go in good conscience and ask someone for money – let alone go and tell someone that I have lost my house, I have no electricity, (am) not able to afford medication, not able to afford my car – when I am employed?’”

The cost of having nothing

Even when they do get paid, some have racked up overwhelming expenses. The added costs of not paying your bills — including overdraft fees, unpaid loan interest and late rent penalties — can be high.

“The back pay doesn’t cover the fact that you … have to pay all these fees,” said Jones.

One of his colleagues at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has to pay her landlord a $75 late fee every day to avoid eviction, he said. “That is a massive amount of money.”

People who have permanently lost housing or cars will also not be able to recover as quickly, and may struggle to make it back to work, Finlay pointed out.

“Getting paid when the government reopens is great, but they’ve been evicted,” Finlay said. “So not only is that on their credit, (but) now trying to get another residence is going to be hard.”

Restarting utilities that have been cut off also comes with a cost in many cases, she said. Officers may have to pay a utility reconnection fee or put down a new deposit.

“We haven’t had any time to recover. We’ve maxed out our credit cards. Our credit has tanked. We can’t get loans this time,” said Rachel, a TSA agent and mother, who requested her last name not be shared publicly.

Rachel described having to leave work to pick up her child and head directly to the WIC office, a federal food aid program for women with young children, to get assistance for her family.

“So I have to go get government assistance from the same government that I work for,” she told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday.

An existential crisis for TSA

Months of turmoil and funding whiplash may have lasting effects on TSA’s ability to recruit and retain workers, McNeill told lawmakers this week.

“Shutdowns and funding uncertainties have real and measurable impacts on recruitment, retention, and employee morale. TSA employees are dedicated public servants that want to continue to keep the traveling public safe and secure, but they are running out of options to keep a roof over their head and put food on the table,” the acting TSA administrator said.

About 1,100 TSA officers quit during the shutdown in October and November, McNeill said. DHS has reported more than 480 have quit since this shutdown began in February.

One TSA officer in Chicago says she was attracted to the job for its stability and health insurance benefits. But consecutive shutdowns have left her unable to pay her medical bills or to afford her prescriptions.

“It makes me not even want this job. I’ve been applying to everything. I even asked my old job if I could come back,” said the 25-year-old officer, who asked to remain unnamed out of concern she would be retaliated against at work.

She has been applying to five to eight jobs every day but nothing has panned out. A Bath and Body Works location responded to her application, she said, but told her she was overqualified for the retail job.

Aaron Barker, president of AFGE Local 554 in Georgia, represents TSA workers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. He told reporters on Tuesday he expects more of his colleagues will leave in the future. He believes the negative image created by the shutdown will make it difficult for TSA to replace workers who have left.

“No one wants to continue to live their life with this amount of uncertainty and undue stress to no fault of their own,” Barker said.

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CNN’s Rebekah Riess and Alexandra Skores contributed to this report.