The Department of Homeland Security has entered a partial shutdown just as U.S.-bound air travel is ramping up for Presidents’ Day and spring-break season, raising urgent questions for international travelers: With much of Homeland Security effectively “dark” on funding, are flights to the United States at risk, and how vulnerable is the country’s aviation security system to political brinkmanship in Washington?

How Homeland Security Went Dark Overnight

The second federal shutdown of 2026 began for the Department of Homeland Security on February 14, after weeks of failed negotiations in Congress over immigration enforcement reforms. Lawmakers had already stumbled through a first, four-day shutdown at the turn of the month, but this time the outage is more targeted: Homeland Security alone has lost its regular stream of funding.

The immediate trigger is a fierce dispute over how Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection operate following the fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti during a federal enforcement action. Senate Democrats have refused to advance a full-year Homeland Security spending bill without limits on street operations, stricter oversight and mandated body cameras. Republicans, while open to some transparency measures, argue that the proposed curbs would gut enforcement and accuse Democrats of holding national security hostage.

The result is a department-wide funding lapse affecting agencies that sit at the very heart of the aviation system: the Transportation Security Administration, which screens passengers and baggage; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which defends critical networks; the Coast Guard, which guards key ports and coastal airspace; and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which often helps airports and local governments respond to major disruptions. While core border enforcement at ICE and CBP remains separately funded for now, much of the broader homeland security architecture that underpins safe and orderly air travel is in fiscal limbo.

Flights Still Take Off, But the System Is Strained

For travelers with tickets to the United States this week, the most important fact is that planes are still flying. As in past shutdowns, roughly 90 percent or more of Homeland Security employees are being kept on the job as “essential” personnel, required to work without pay. That includes the vast majority of Transportation Security Officers staffing checkpoints at both domestic and international gateways, as well as many Customs and Border Protection officers who process arriving passengers at U.S. airports.

Air traffic control, which falls under the separate Department of Transportation, is also continuing operations, with controllers deemed critical staff. But the system is functioning on borrowed time and fraying at the margins. Multiple shutdowns since 2025 have already left air traffic control training pipelines on hold, inspections postponed and hiring plans shelved, contributing to a nationwide controller shortage. Internal briefings and congressional testimony in recent months have warned that prolonged funding crises could translate into chronic delays at major hubs.

During the lengthy 2025 shutdown, U.S. airports saw thousands of delayed flights in a single day as exhausted controllers and unpaid TSA officers struggled with staffing gaps. Lawmakers from both parties acknowledged that absenteeism grew as workers picked up second jobs or simply could not afford to report for shifts without pay. Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee have recently sounded alarms that a repeat scenario could trigger what they described as a “full-scale aviation crisis” if funding lapses drag into peak travel periods.

Security Checkpoints: The Thin Blue Line Under Financial Duress

At security lanes, the shutdown is invisible in equipment but evident in human terms. Machines that detect explosives and scan baggage are powered on, body scanners hum as usual, and federal rules have not been rolled back. What has changed is the financial reality facing the officers who operate those lines. Transportation Security Officers in many cities are already working their first shifts with no certainty about when they will be paid.

In previous shutdowns, this has been a slow-burning fuse. Initially, absenteeism ticks up modestly, but as rent is due and savings are exhausted, more officers call out or resign. Major airports such as Dallas–Fort Worth, Chicago and Newark have historically seen growing wait times and sporadic lane closures after just a week or two of missed pay. Industry and union officials fear that repeated cycles of shutdowns could accelerate attrition from a workforce that is already difficult to recruit and retain.

For now, airport managers are trying to keep travelers insulated from the turmoil with scheduling tweaks and overtime, but that approach has limits. As financial tension spreads through the frontline security ranks, aviation experts warn that the risk is not only longer lines, but the erosion of focus and morale in a job that relies on split-second judgment. Each additional day that Homeland Security goes unfunded deepens the strain on the people responsible for stopping prohibited items, weapons and explosives from reaching aircraft cabins.

Beyond the X-ray machines, Homeland Security’s partial shutdown ripples through less visible but equally critical layers of aviation safety: customs screening, data systems and cyber defenses. On arrival in the United States, foreign and returning passengers pass through Customs and Border Protection checkpoints that rely heavily on complex databases and biometric tools. Past incidents have shown how quickly air travel can seize up when those systems falter, even for a matter of hours.

In recent years, customs processing glitches have led to scenes of packed arrival halls and waits stretching for hours at airports in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other international gateways. Flights landed as scheduled, but bottlenecks at passport control trapped travelers in queues while officers reverted to manual checks. Official statements have consistently emphasized that these outages were not the result of hacking, but they expose how reliant modern border operations have become on stable, well-maintained IT infrastructure.

That is where the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency comes in. CISA plays a behind-the-scenes role hardening the networks that support everything from airline reservation systems to screening databases. The agency’s leadership has repeatedly warned Congress that shutdowns force it to postpone key projects, stretch thin its incident response teams and slow work with airports and airlines on emerging threats. With the current funding lapse focused squarely on Homeland Security, CISA’s work is again under financial stress at a time when cyberattacks on transportation systems worldwide are growing more sophisticated.

Regional Flashpoints: El Paso’s Airspace Closure Raises Questions

While the Homeland Security shutdown is a budget story, a separate, startling development in El Paso, Texas, underlines how quickly U.S. air travel can be upended by security concerns. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a 10-day closure of the airspace around El Paso International Airport, citing only “special security reasons.” Commercial, cargo and even medical flights were abruptly halted, with airlines and local officials saying they received no advance warning.

The shutdown of such a significant regional airport, which handled more than 4 million passengers in 2024, is the most extensive targeted flight restriction imposed by U.S. authorities since the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Flights en route to El Paso were diverted at the last minute, travelers were stranded in terminals from Chicago to Phoenix, and confusion spread as neither federal nor local agencies provided details on the nature of the threat.

So far, officials have not publicly linked the El Paso airspace closure to the Homeland Security funding fight in Washington. The order originates with the FAA, which is not affected by the current DHS-only shutdown. Still, the episode underscores how dependent travelers are on an intricate web of federal agencies working in concert, and how a crisis in one part of that system can knock out air links for an entire region overnight.

What This Means for International Travelers Heading to the U.S.

For passengers contemplating a flight to the United States in the coming days, the practical fallout of Homeland Security’s funding lapse falls into three broad categories: potential delays, heightened uncertainty and a more brittle safety net. Airlines are not canceling U.S.-bound routes because of the shutdown, and foreign carriers continue to operate scheduled services. Airports overseas will still require standard security checks and documentation to board, and U.S. border entry rules remain unchanged.

Where travelers are most likely to feel the impact is at choke points: security screening before departure from U.S. airports, transfer connections at busy hubs and passport control on arrival. If absenteeism among TSA officers rises, security queues could lengthen, particularly at peak hours in major gateways such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Miami. A shortage of customs officers or technical problems with DHS systems could likewise translate into longer lines at arrival halls, especially for large wide-body flights landing close together.

Industry analysts recommend building more slack into itineraries that involve tight domestic connections after a long-haul flight to the United States. Padding layovers by an extra hour can provide a buffer against slower security or customs lines. Travelers should also be prepared for abrupt changes to flight times or routings if staffing issues or localized security concerns trigger ground delays, as has happened before during past shutdown periods and major technical failures.

How Airlines and Airports Are Bracing for a Prolonged Standoff

Airlines and airport operators are scrambling to reassure passengers while quietly dusting off contingency plans refined during earlier shutdowns and system failures. Carriers have been through a series of shocks over the past three years, from a nationwide FAA outage that briefly grounded all departures in 2023 to localized computer failures that paralyzed large hubs. In internal memos and earnings calls, executives have warned that repeated government funding crises compound those technological and staffing challenges.

To manage the current uncertainty, airlines are coordinating with local TSA leadership to anticipate staffing gaps and adjust checkpoint opening times. Some airports are redeploying customer service personnel toward security bottlenecks, expanding real-time updates via mobile apps and encouraging passengers to arrive earlier ahead of busy departure banks. Airport trade groups are pressing lawmakers to restore Homeland Security funding quickly, arguing that the global reputation of U.S. aviation reliability is at stake.

Behind closed doors, industry representatives are also reviving calls for structural changes, including more flexible funding mechanisms for critical security functions and a long-term plan to address shortages of air traffic controllers and security officers. For now, those are policy debates for another day. But the message from airline operations centers to front-line staff is clear: expect a bumpy ride until Washington finds a way to turn Homeland Security’s funding lights back on.

Is This a Safety Threat or a Political Crisis at 35,000 Feet?

A key question for anxious travelers is whether Homeland Security “going dark” on funding translates into a direct threat to flight safety. Aviation experts stress that in the short term, the answer is no: the essential layers of security and air traffic management remain in place, staffed by trained professionals operating under the same rules and protocols that applied before the shutdown. Planes are not taking off without proper clearances, screening machines are not being switched off, and counterterrorism watchlists remain active.

The deeper concern is what happens if shutdowns like this become a recurring feature of American politics. Each time Homeland Security is forced to rely on unpaid labor, freezes hiring or delays technological upgrades, small cracks appear in an aviation security system that depends on redundancy and resilience. Over months and years, those cracks can widen into vulnerabilities, whether through staff burnout, slower modernization of aging IT systems or deferred investments in new screening technologies and cybersecurity.

For now, the jeopardy facing the next flight to the United States is less about an imminent collapse in safety and more about growing instability in the institutions that protect air travel. As Congress remains deadlocked over immigration and enforcement policy, the aviation system is quietly absorbing yet another shock. Travelers boarding U.S.-bound flights this week will still find familiar procedures and professional crews. What they cannot see from their seats at 35,000 feet is how close the machinery that keeps those flights moving is coming to the limits of what it can withstand without sustained, reliable support from Washington.