Over the past several weeks, CBS News has spoken with roughly two dozen Department of Homeland Security personnel spanning career civil servants, uniformed personnel and frontline staff about the institutional strain caused by the partial government shutdown, now in its 68th day. Their roles differ, but the sentiment is strikingly consistent: They feel forgotten, not just by Congress, but by a political system that in their view, has little understanding of how DHS functions in the daily lives of Americans.

This is what happens when one of the federal government's most sprawling and mission-critical agencies is told to stop working, to go without and to simply wait. 

"What we do only becomes visible when something breaks," one employee said. "And right now, we've reached a breaking point."

The paper clip economy

Inside DHS headquarters, the shutdown has produced a kind of bureaucratic improvisation not seen in decades.

Adobe software and other subscriptions have lapsed, forcing employees into what one official described as "unique and humorously complex workarounds." Some offices have run out of paper clips. Others are reusing printer paper, flipping old documents over to print on the blank side. The Office of Public Affairs has resorted to using only three-hole punched paper because it's the only stock left in supply closets.

Elsewhere, staff roam hallways in search of toner cartridges and ink. Staples have become a scarce commodity. In a department built to respond to catastrophic threats, employees have been reduced to bartering for office supplies.

It may sound trivial, but DHS employees point out that the office-supply struggle further undermines the morale of a department that leans heavily on contracts, subscriptions, and logistics. When funding stops, that infrastructure doesn't degrade gracefully — it frays.

A DHS spokesperson framed it more starkly, noting that even basic vendors — from cybersecurity firms to toilet paper suppliers — must now gamble on whether they will ever be paid. The result, the spokesperson said, is a department "being stretched to the breaking point."

What it costs to go "unpaid"

For most of DHS' 260,000 employees, the shutdown's most immediate impact has been financial — but not always in obvious ways.

Government travel credit cards, necessary for everything from inspections to protective details, cannot be processed during the funding lapse. Many are now more than 60 days past due. Employees — unable to make payments without reimbursement — are watching their personal credit scores deteriorate as a result.

At the Transportation Security Administration, the numbers are staggering: frontline officers collectively rack up more than $5 million per month in travel-related charges to keep airports secure. 

For agents with the U.S. Secret Service, the burden is even more personal. Some within the president's protective detail have paid out-of-pocket for travel tied to protective missions — and have gone unreimbursed for two months.

Some relief has come after four-hour security checkpoint waits in some airports nationwide prompted a late-March presidential directive ensuring DHS employees — including TSA officers — receive backpay. Since then, absenteeism among frontline TSA employees has been reduced by 45%, but DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday that the money used to cover the $1.6 billion in DHS employee payroll twice a month will dry up during the first week of May. 

TSA: A workforce in retreat

Nowhere is the human toll more visible than at TSA checkpoints.

More than 780 officers have resigned during this shutdown. Officials fear that number could climb, echoing the previous shutdown in 2025 that drove nearly 1,100 officers to leave the agency. For a workforce of just under 50,000, this will have long-term implications for recruitment and retention.

Absenteeism surged earlier in the shutdown as officers struggled to afford gas, childcare and rent without reliable pay. While attendance has improved following partial compensation measures, the damage to morale and institutional trust lingers.

Beyond workforce payroll, without appropriations, TSA officials say the agency cannot invest in next-generation screening technology, raising concerns about readiness for major upcoming events: the 2026 summer travel season, the FIFA World Cup, and the nation's 250th anniversary.

FEMA: Governing on the edge of the "danger zone"

On paper, FEMA is still functioning. Disaster survivors continue to receive aid. Response operations move forward. But behind the scenes, the agency is quietly rationing its future.

Every week, approximately 45,000 emergency personnel — firefighters, EMTs and others — miss emergency training because classes at the National Fire Academy and the Center for Domestic Preparedness have been indefinitely postponed.

FEMA has also been absent from key national coordination events ahead of hurricane season including the National Hurricane Conference and National Emergency Management Association Midyear Forum. These gatherings, often overlooked outside emergency management circles, are where plans are refined and relationships forged before disasters strike.

Meanwhile, DHS officials say the National Flood Insurance Program is operating under severe limitations, delaying policy renewals and disrupting real estate markets in flood-prone regions.

But the most alarming development is taking place within FEMA's core funding mechanism: the Disaster Relief Fund. With only $3.4 billion remaining, the agency is nearing a threshold known as Immediate Needs Funding. Under INF, FEMA restricts spending to lifesaving operations, halting broader recovery and mitigation efforts.

At the center of that calculation is the Disaster Relief Fund, FEMA's primary account for responding to catastrophes. As of this week, officials say it sits at roughly $3.4 billion — just above the $3 billion threshold that triggers what is known as Immediate Needs Funding, or INF.

That threshold is not arbitrary. It is calibrated to reflect the average cost of responding to a major catastrophic disaster — an event on the scale of a hurricane like Helene in 2024. In practice, that means debris removal, emergency protective measures and critical infrastructure repairs — like restoring water systems — would continue. But hazard mitigation projects, long-term rebuilding and large swaths of public assistance funding would slow or stop altogether. Parks won't get rebuilt. Infrastructure projects would stall. Reimbursements to states — sometimes for work already completed — would be delayed indefinitely.

And increasingly, FEMA is making those decisions before INF is even triggered.

Officials describe a quiet throttling of spending as the agency approaches the threshold. Billions in outstanding reimbursements — including COVID-era assistance, much of it owed to hospitals — remain unpaid, not because they are ineligible, but because releasing those funds too quickly could drain the account entirely.

"Technically, we could drain the DRF overnight," one official acknowledged. "So we're being very deliberate."

That deliberation is colliding with the calendar. Hurricane season begins June 1.

"If we're below that threshold heading into hurricane season," one FEMA official said, "we are putting American citizens at extreme risk."

What makes this moment unprecedented is not just the funding level — but the context. FEMA has entered Immediate Needs Funding roughly 10 times since 2001. It has never done so during a lapse in appropriations.

Quiet crises 

Within DHS' intelligence arm, officials say concern is quietly building around security preparations for the FIFA World Cup — particularly as the shutdown continues to erode staffing, continuity and hiring. One official in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis described an operation functioning at roughly 80% capacity, with employees rotating in and out of furlough status week to week — disrupting even routine information-sharing and leaving critical gaps in coordination. 

The bigger risk, the official said, is cumulative: vacancies in field intelligence positions in World Cup host cities remain unfilled, new hires cannot be onboarded, and overworked personnel face growing burnout — all of which could complicate the complex vetting and threat assessment mission required for a global event of this scale. 

"It's not a recipe for peak performance," the official said.

At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the shutdown has hollowed out capacity at a particularly sensitive moment.

More than half the workforce is furloughed. Acting Director Nick Anderson testified that staffing has dropped to roughly 40%, sharply limiting the agency's ability to monitor threats and conduct outreach. Anderson has pointed out that nation-state actors — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — continue probing U.S. infrastructure, often exploiting basic vulnerabilities like default passwords on internet-connected systems.

CISA has managed to maintain core defensive operations, including coordination with intelligence and law enforcement partners. But the broader ecosystem —preventive outreach, proactive risk mitigation — has been curtailed.

For the Coast Guard, more than 500 unpaid utility bills have accumulated, threatening electricity and water service at Coast Guard stations. At the same time, a backlog of 18,000 merchant mariner credentials has built up, delaying the certification of workers essential to maritime commerce.

As the Secret Service looks ahead to an unusually demanding horizon: a presidential campaign cycle, the FIFA World Cup, and the 2028 Olympics, the shutdown has forced the suspension of all media training courses and slowed operational preparations, according to multiple DHS and Secret Service officials. 

While testifying on Capitol Hill, earlier this month, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said supply chain issues and funding constraints complicate efforts to modernize protective technology, even as the agency invests heavily to stay ahead of emerging threats like drone-based attacks.

Capitol Hill paralysis 

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers remain locked in a familiar standoff — one that Mullin and congressional leaders say is most likely to be resolved in a narrower reconciliation package. That would grant the more politically contentious components of DHS funding — including U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — for the next three years. 

Such an outcome would restore funding to border and immigration enforcement priorities while sidestepping all of the structural reforms Democratic lawmakers spent months advocating after sweeping immigration enforcement action in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. Democrats sought to end roving patrols and bar ICE agents from entering certain places; a use-of-force code for immigration enforcement agents; and requirements for agents not to wear masks and to don body cameras.

In the meantime, the rest of the department waits.

The sense of invisibility among the ranks of DHS employees has been compounded by the uneven impact of the shutdown. While more politically charged components — particularly CBP and ICE — have seen uninterrupted funding bolstered through legislation like the "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act, less controversial, largely nonpartisan agencies such as FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have been left to absorb the full force of a more than two-month funding lapse.

For many employees, the financial toll has been as destabilizing as the operational one. Over the past fiscal year, those DHS employees not exempted from shutdown impacts have gone without an on-time paycheck more often than they have received one.

"You wouldn't ask this of anyone in any other job," another DHS employee said. "But somehow here, among the ranks of our nation's homeland security apparatus, it's status quo."