Unpaid TSA workers are now seeking help from food banks as the shutdown drags on

At San Diego International Airport, travelers are still showing up with rolling suitcases, boarding passes, and spring break plans, and the security lines are still moving, at least for now. But behind those checkpoint lanes, Karina Vargas reported for ABC 10 News that many Transportation Security Administration officers are working without pay as the partial government shutdown drags on, and some are now turning to food banks just to make it through the week.

That contrast is what makes this story hit so hard. From the outside, the airport still looks like a functioning piece of the travel system, but inside, some of the people keeping it running are quietly running out of money, patience, and options.

Vargas’ report does not rely on abstract budget talk or political slogans. Instead, it follows the reality of one TSA officer, Alondra Galvan, a single mother in San Diego who says she is trying to hold together basic family life while her paycheck has effectively vanished again.

And that word, “again,” may be the part that stings most.

For Some Workers, This Shutdown Is Not New – It Is A Repeat Injury

Karina Vargas explains that Galvan has worked as a TSA officer for two years and is still trying to recover from the damage caused by the last major shutdown, when she says she went without pay for 43 days. Now she is facing another shutdown, another stretch of forced work without wages, and another moment where the cost is not just financial but personal and emotional.

Galvan told Vargas that the situation has become deeply destabilizing, describing everything from financial strain to mental stress. She said there are nights when she lies awake asking herself what she is going to do and how she is going to do it.

That kind of quote is powerful because it strips away the bureaucratic language that usually surrounds federal shutdowns. People often hear these stories framed in terms of appropriations, negotiations, leverage, and deadlines. What gets buried is the human fact that for workers living close to the edge, a missed paycheck is not an inconvenience. It is a crisis.

And that is especially true for people who do not have the option of simply refusing to show up.

TSA officers are still expected to report for duty. The country still expects them at the checkpoints. Travelers still expect them to scan bags, manage lines, and help keep flights secure. But as Vargas’ report makes painfully clear, they are doing that while some of them are now wondering how they will pay for groceries, child care, and gas.

Alondra Galvan Says The Shutdown Has Turned Into A Family Emergency

Galvan’s situation, as described by Vargas, is not just about one worker missing one paycheck. It is about the kind of chain reaction that happens when a single parent loses income with no warning and no clear end date.

She told Vargas that her son would normally be in spring break camps, but she cannot afford that now because there is no money coming in. Without camp, there is no regular child-care solution. Without money, there is no babysitter. In her words, it is “all around bad.”

That is the kind of practical problem that often gets overlooked in political arguments. It is not only that unpaid workers cannot buy extras. They start losing the basic systems that make ordinary life possible.

Child care is one of those systems. Gas is another. Food is another. Once one of them starts failing, the others often follow.

Galvan also told Vargas she is down to about her last $100, and that after putting $50 of gas in her car, she did not know how she was going to manage the next two weeks. That is not some dramatic flourish. That is a plain household calculation, and it sounds like the kind of math millions of Americans already understand all too well.

The difference here is that Galvan is not unemployed, and she is not refusing to work. She is still going to the airport. She is still doing the job. The government just is not paying her.

Food Banks Are Now Filling A Gap The Federal Payroll Isn’t

One of the most sobering details in Karina Vargas’ report is that the union representing TSA workers held a food bank to help them get through the shutdown.

Galvan said that anything helps, even if the supplies are basic: eggs, milk, vegetables, and rice. She told Vargas that those are the foods her household eats every day anyway, which makes the aid feel both humble and essential at the same time.

That image is hard to shake. Federal airport security workers, still expected to show up and keep the flying public safe during a heavy travel season, are now relying on food distributions to cover what their missing paychecks no longer can.

There is something deeply broken about that.

A food bank should be a lifeline in moments of catastrophe, not a stand-in for wages owed to people already doing their jobs. Yet this is what shutdown politics has become for many workers. They are left waiting while outside organizations, unions, charities, and community support systems try to hold them together long enough for Washington to resolve something it should never have let reach this point.

And the longer that gap lasts, the more dangerous the consequences become, not only for workers but for the systems they operate.

The Airport Keeps Running, But The Pressure Is Starting To Show

Vargas’ report also widens the lens beyond one family and one airport checkpoint.

She notes that travelers are already dealing with thinner staffing as more TSA officers call out sick, and that this is contributing to long lines and growing airport chaos around the country. The broader implication is obvious: when workers are pushed far enough, the consequences do not stay hidden behind the employee entrance. The public starts to feel them too.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, as cited in Vargas’ report, more than 350 TSA officers have left the force since the shutdown began, and more continue to call out.

That number matters because airport security is one of those systems that looks stable right up until the moment it doesn’t. It depends on enough trained people actually being there, alert, focused, and willing to keep showing up. If workers start walking away, or even just reaching the point where they cannot keep doing this unpaid, the strain shows up quickly.

And it is happening during spring break travel season, which is one of the worst possible times for staffing instability to hit.

That does not just create inconvenience. It starts to raise bigger questions about resilience, fatigue, and how long a system can rely on personal sacrifice before that sacrifice becomes unsustainable.

Galvan Is Still Showing Up, But She’s Already Looking For A Way Out

One of the saddest parts of the story is that Galvan, by her own account, is trying to stay loyal to the job while also preparing for the possibility that she may not be able to keep doing it.

Karina Vargas reports that Galvan has decided to continue working for now, but she does not know how much longer she can handle it. She is already starting to look for other jobs to fall back on because financially she is being stretched too far.

That should worry anyone paying attention.

It should worry people because TSA work is not some side gig that can be casually swapped out without consequences. These are trained security employees working in a critical part of the transportation system. If people like Galvan are pushed to the point where they have to start planning their exit simply to survive, the shutdown is no longer just harming workers. It is damaging the institution itself.

And that may be one of the hardest long-term costs to measure. Even after the shutdown ends, some of the trust and stability it erodes may not come back easily.

Workers remember how they were treated. They remember whether they were expected to absorb the damage quietly. They remember whether anyone in power seemed to care that they were standing at airport checkpoints while wondering how to feed their families at home.

A Shutdown Becomes Real The Moment Workers Start Visiting Food Banks

Karina Vargas’ report succeeds because it takes a giant political fight and shows what it actually looks like on the ground.

It looks like a single mother trying to figure out child care with no money coming in. It looks like a federal security worker down to her last hundred dollars. It looks like groceries coming from a union-run food bank. It looks like someone still showing up to do a public-safety job while privately wondering how much longer she can afford to keep going.

That is when a shutdown stops being a talking point and becomes something real.

It is real when unpaid workers have to ask for milk, eggs, and rice. It is real when they begin searching for backup jobs while still wearing the uniform. And it is real when the country keeps depending on them anyway.

Galvan told Vargas that what she wants is for this to end. That is a small sentence, but it carries the weight of the whole report.

Because at this point, for workers like her, this is no longer about political messaging or who scores points in a standoff. It is about whether the people keeping the system running can keep their own lives from falling apart while they wait for someone else to do the right thing.