News / TSA budget cut could lead to air cargo security privatisation

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The Trump administration is looking to slash more than $1.5bn from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and trim its ranks by more than 9,400 employees.

This could be the first step to turning cargo and passenger screening from government agency to the private sector.

These numbers are from a budget document in which the White House outlines its funding plans in the upcoming fiscal year for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA. The administration’s budget proposal is due to be reviewed by Congress later this month.

Last Friday, President Trump signalled looming budget cuts for the TSA of $52m, and suggested that smaller US airports should shift their security screening to private operators. This could reduce the TSA payroll by more than 4,500, while another 4,800 jobs could be eliminated by ending staffing at exit lanes and other efficiency measures.

The proposals come in the wake of a second spell of lengthy delays at US airports caused by government shutdowns, which saw security screeners take sick leave or quit the TSA after they had been working without pay since mid-February.

According to one report, the TSA lost more than 1,600 of its 50,000-strong workforce during the funding disputes.

The planned cuts are widely seen as an overture to an end of an active federal aviation security programme. Some members of the Republican party have called for full privatisation of the TSA.

The president himself has been visibly at loggerheads with the agency; he removed its head on the first day of his new tenure in the White House and has not replaced him. Last year a statement from the White House declared that the “TSA has consistently failed audits while implementing intrusive screening measures that violate Americans’ privacy and dignity”.

The planned cuts to the TSA budget and staffing are raising concern in the air cargo industry.

“There are a lot of concerns on my end,” said Brandon Fried, executive director of the US Airforwarders Association, which has been closely involved in the development and implementation of the TSA’s security regime for air cargo since its inception.

Mr Fried doubts that the proposed cuts would reduce the number of TSA inspectors. If they did, this would result in longer audit cycles, he said.

“In the short term there would be minimum disruption of cargo flows. Screening will continue,” he commented, noting that the existing programme was well established and forwarders were familiar with the elements and processes involved.

Over time those changes would affect air cargo security.

“It’s more the integrity of the system, the shipper validation, a slower approval process, communication over changes in the programme, uncertainty in the execution. We risk a shift in oversight gaps,” Mr Fried said.

“It was a Republican administration that, in response to 9/11, saw the wisdom of the Aviation Security Act and that an essential part of this was federalisation,” he added.

But the current administration appears more concerned with fiscal issues, and “they want to slash the budget”, Mr Fried said.

It will be interesting to see if the government’s budget envisages reductions to the funding and manpower requirements of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Its budget surged from $10bn to $85bn last year, thanks to an allocation of $75bn over four years, dwarfing the budgets of other US law enforcement agencies.

The Department of Justice, including the FBI, stands to get around $35bn in the administration’s 2026 budget appropriations request.

Privatising airport security screening would remove it from future funding disputes in Washington, but it is unclear how it would reduce federal spending on the programme, as the TSA is supposed to pay private contractors. In the near term, at least.