A La Guardia TSA Agent Tells All

[demmiblue]

It’s a bad time to be a Transportation Security Officer at La Guardia. A fatal crash closed the airport Monday morning, leaving travelers with canceled flights and winding, hourslong security lines — which only compounded the challenges of week five of a government shutdown that has forced TSA officers to show up to work without pay with many callouts and some agents even quitting. (This is the third shutdown in less than a year.) Oh, and this week marked the beginning of President Trump’s plan to send ICE agents to airports, including La Guardia, to “help.” We talked to Kyle Pigott, a TSA officer at La Guardia and the vice-president of Local 2222, about the current madness — and what advice he has for people braving airline travel right now.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How has it been working through your third government shutdown?

The sad thing is it’s tough but it’s not a surprise. We’ve been furloughed over 90 days. That’s ridiculous. Right now, I’m missing two and a half checks. Some people have taken out unemployment assistance. Some people have relied on predatory loans to get by. You have to pay off your car, you have to pay your mortgage. I had to apply for food stamps a couple weeks ago. It’s embarrassing as a federal employee for ten years. And I don’t even have children.

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What is ICE actually doing there?

They’re the reason that we’re not getting paid. And now I’m working next to that person. And they’re getting paid to do nothing. They’re not trained. It takes six months to train a Transportation Security Officer. They’ve received none of that. A tweet went out and the next day they’re at the airport walking around sipping coffees, holding on to their vest. They arrived on Monday, and now they’re hanging out in the break room doing nothing. They’re warming up their lunch. I don’t know what you’re hungry from — you didn’t do anything! We already have Federal Air Marshal police and Port Authority police, so there’s already ten armed officers at any given moment.

Are the ICE agents armed too?

Why do you need your vest and gun to move a line? That’s weird. If police said they were going to come in and help you move a bag or a tray, I don’t think they’d come in riot gear. It’s gonna make anybody feel uncomfortable. Don’t you guys have ICE T-shirts? Don’t they have ICE polos?

https://www.curbed.com/article/tsa-laguardia-airport-shutdown-lines-tips.html