Sydney Martinez, Campus Carrier news editor
The partial government shutdown and the war in Iran have widely impacted Berry students’ travel and study abroad programs.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has been shut down since Feb. 14 because of a dispute over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Congress has failed to pass the necessary appropriations bills, which authorize federal agencies to spend a designated amount of money allocated from the U.S. Treasury.
Throughout this time, TSA agents have not been paid with many agents calling out sick or finding other jobs. Due to a lack of employees, airport TSA lines have seen increased wait times, with the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport asking passengers to “allow at least 4 hours or more” for TSA screenings.
Anticipating long wait times, sophomore Amanda Hartnett and a group of her psychology colleagues, the Mindful (MOCHI) Minds, traveled to New Orleans via bus so that they wouldn’t be late to the Southeastern Psychological Association conference. She also expressed concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) being present at the airport.
Hartnett said that Assistant Professor of Psychology Kuo Deng, suggested that the students cancel their flights and take other modes of transportation to avoid long wait times at the airport.
“She was the one who offered a bus ride or a train ride or anything else so we didn’t have to deal with the airport,”
Hartnett said.
Despite seeing videos circulating online that TSA wait times were high, sophomore Quinn Larkworthy proceeded with her scheduled flight for Detroit on March 23.
“We had left on Tuesday, and I didn’t see anything until Monday morning,” Larkworthy said. “I saw a bunch of stuff about really long wait times, and then my mom actually reached out and was like telling me to be cautious, and maybe we should even drive to Michigan.”
Larkworthy said that if she could have canceled her flights, she would have driven. When she arrived at the airport at 8 a.m., the wait times were not as long as she had seen online.
“I think we got there at 8:00 and our flight was at 2:00,” Larkworthy said. “We only ended up staying in line for an hour. We were expecting to wait like five hours.”
Larkworthy said she saw ICE officers at the airport, but they were not helping TSA employees.
“There were probably like 10 plus ICE officers and probably like 20 police officers just kind of standing around,” Larkworthy said. “They weren’t really helping the TSA officers.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on March 30 to provide back pay for TSA employees. According to the New York Times, the lines at airports that saw long TSA check-in times began to settle down as of Monday.
Visiting Associate Professor of International Affairs Vincent Gawronski said that traveling to the Middle East is partially closed closer to Iran due to air conflict.
“The airspace in and around Iran and the surrounding countries is dangerous,” Gawronski said. “Most of it is closed to commercial traffic. I don’t know that I want to be flying around in that area, even in a neighboring country.”
Gawronski said that tourists are now less likely to travel to the United States. According to Forbes, the U.S. saw a 6% drop in foreign arrivals over the first year of Trump’s second term.
“It’s gotten so hard to get a tourist visa to come to this country,” Gawronski said. “There are countries that are banned, dozens of countries that can’t even come here.”
Gawronski said that our perception abroad has turned people away from traveling to the United States. ICE is among the many factors that make foreigners reconsider visiting the country.
“[Tourists] see all the stuff that’s going on at the airports with TSA and the lines and now that ICE is at the airports, that kind of tarnished our image abroad,” Gawronski said. “It’s expensive to travel, you know, airfare and all of that. You put together a trip to come to the United States, and then you’re denied entry, for whatever reason, or you’re even detained, you don’t know that it’s going to happen or not, you’ve lost all that money for the travel and so people are wary of that.”
Following the beginning of the conflict in Iran, Berry and their insurance partner increased monitoring of the Department of Communication’s study abroad trip to Berlin, Germany. The United States and Israel have been at war with Iran since Feb. 28. The study abroad taking place this summer will stop in Istanbul, Turkey and will change flights to continue to Berlin.
“Their flight path lays over in Istanbul, Turkey,” Director of International Experiences Elizabeth Davis said. “That is an area of a little bit of concern. Not to say you can’t go to Istanbul for a layover, but it is an area that is in the vicinity of what’s happening in the Middle East.”
Davis said that for now, the most her team can do is to listen to the guidance provided by the U.S. Department of State and Berry’s travel insurance company.
“We’re working with our insurance company to get feedback, with our travel agents, looking at the Department of State’s travel advisories for Turkey, just to see, will it be safe to lay over in Turkey?” Davis said.
The Department of State has issued a level two travel advisory for Turkey, saying that U.S. citizens should exercise increased caution traveling there. Davis said that study abroad trips can go to countries with a level two advisory.
“Even though it’s going to be just a couple of hours in the airport, we want to make sure that it’s still a safe place to go,” Davis said.
Davis said that before students study abroad they go through a series of meetings so they understand the basics of safe
travel abroad.
The BCC 200 students and Berry Singers who traveled abroad and arrived past their original landing date encountered problems that were not related to the conflict with Iran or issues with the TSA.
“For some of them, it was plane mechanical issues, so that could have happened at any point,” Davis said. “There were a bunch of big storms that went across the United States that then caused ripple delays and there were also airlines trying to catch up with these delays.”
Davis said that there were also staff shortages at some of the airports, causing some flights to be canceled or further delayed. She said that she has rarely come across these issues during her time traveling with the study abroad program.
Davis said that summer and fall study abroad programs should not be experiencing a similar problem, mostly because Berry’s programs don’t go to the Middle East.
“All our programs should be able to run as they typically would, and that’s because we don’t have any programs that are going to that area,” Davis said. “We wouldn’t have run them anyway because of the travel advisory before the conflict broke out. They had some pretty high travel advisories that we wouldn’t have approved programs there anyway.”