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TSA workers are paid and airports in the US return to normal.

The major U.S. airports which?suffered massive delays for weeks because 50,000 Transportation Security Administration security officers were not paid since mid-February have now returned to normal.

On Monday, airports in Baltimore and Houston, as well as New Orleans, Dallas, New York, and New York City, which have all seen massive delays over the past few weeks, reported very short queues. In some cases, security lines were as long as four hours. This was the longest line in TSA history.

The Homeland Security Department announced that workers would be paid by Monday, despite the fact that Congress has failed to end the 45 day partial government shutdown.

On Monday morning, some workers reported on social media that their paychecks had arrived early in the morning.

The number of absences reached a record high on Friday, with about 12,4% or 3,560 workers not reporting to work. Massive lines were also reported at many major airports. Since February, more than 500 airport security agents have quit their jobs.

At New York JFK, more than a third did not arrive on Friday. Baltimore, Atlanta and New Orleans were among the airports where 45% of employees did not arrive on Friday.

Democrats in Congress are holding up funding for DHS, while demanding that the rules governing immigration operations be changed. This comes after agents in Minneapolis killed U.S. citizens Renee Good?and?Alex Pretti.

The Congressional Democrats proposed funding TSA separate from the negotiations over immigration reforms.

The Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives rejected on Friday a bipartisan Senate agreement to end the six-week funding deadlock and passed a bill to fund DHS.

The airports are struggling with the spring break travel surge, which is about 5% more than last year.

Last week, hundreds of U.S. Immigration?agents & Homeland Security Investigations agents began deploying at 14 U.S. Airports to assist security screening. The White House announced that they would remain until normal operations resumed. (Reporting and editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and David Shepardson)

(source: Reuters)