DHS Restarts Global Entry After Two-Week Suspension

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quietly re-activated Global Entry at 5 a.m. Eastern on March 11, ending a politically charged, 17-day pause that had forced millions of pre-approved travelers to use regular passport-control lines. The program—funded by enrolment fees rather than congressional appropriations—was shut down on February 22 as part of DHS cost-saving measures during the ongoing partial government shutdown. Airlines, airport authorities and the U.S. Travel Association mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign, warning of three-hour queues at JFK, DFW and SFO and forecasting up to US $140 million in lost productivity and missed connections if the closure ran into the Spring-Break peak. In a brief statement DHS said it was “working hard to alleviate the disruptions to travelers caused by the Democrats’ shutdown,” but it did not explain why a fee-funded program had been halted in the first place. Industry groups accuse the administration of using the shutdown to pressure Congress for tougher immigration measures: Senator Mark Warner noted that 18 million travelers used Global Entry in 2025, saving CBP more than 300 000 officer-hours. Because Global Entry kiosks feed passenger data directly into CBP back-office systems, airports had to redeploy officers to manual document inspection when the program was paused. For corporate mobility managers the restart is a huge relief. Employers moving staff on tight turnaround assignments—especially those connecting through U.S. hubs after overnight trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific flights—can once again rely on 5-to-10-minute clearance times instead of budgeting an extra two hours for immigration formalities. Relocation firms are advising assignees to reactivate their Trusted Traveler profiles immediately; interviews and enrolment centers have resumed normal hours, although CBP warns of residual backlogs in Boston, Seattle and Houston.



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Travel-risk consultants caution that the shutdown has exposed a structural vulnerability: fee-supported Trusted Traveler programs are not legally insulated from future funding lapses. Multinational employers may wish to add Mobile Passport Control or CLEAR memberships as secondary contingencies and to include “shutdown buffer days” in assignee travel calendars should another political impasse arise. Looking ahead, DHS officials told Reuters they will “assess options” for reimbursing the estimated 220 000 travelers who paid the US $100 application fee during the suspension but could not schedule interviews. CBP is also accelerating a previously planned pilot that will allow remote video interviews—technology that could make the program less susceptible to staffing shortages in any future shutdowns.