Ted Cruz was seen in the Fort Lauderdale airport on Tuesday, days after he and many other members of Congress left Washington amid the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
TMZ, which previously spotted Cruz flying out of the capital on Friday, obtained photos of the Texas Republican waiting to board a United flight while surrounded by four police officers and an apparent security guard. His destination wasn’t immediately clear.
Also unclear is what Cruz—who infamously took a trip to Cancun in 2021 while his constituents endured a historic cold spell and was sightseeing in Greece when devastating floods killed more than 100 people in 2025—was doing in Fort Lauderdale. Before he arrived in one of Florida’s spring break hotspots, Cruz was in Houston, and then Dallas, where he spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
The senator’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Meanwhile, Cruz’s colleague, Lindsey Graham, was in Florida over the weekend—at Walt Disney World in Orlando.
In one photo obtained by TMZ, Graham, 70, is holding a The Little Mermaid-themed bubble wand in the Magic Kingdom—apparently on behalf of a girl who was in the bathroom, witnesses said. Graham also rode the Space Mountain roller coaster, and dined at Chef Mickey’s.
Graham, via his communications director, later told the Daily Beast in a statement: “I was invited to a meeting in South Florida on Friday with Trump official Steve Witkoff and others to talk about the possibility of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. I went to Orlando to meet friends after. I’m already back in South Carolina... I voted seven times to fully fund the government. Call a Democrat.”
Democrats oppose funding immigration enforcement agencies, which are part of DHS, without implementing checks on them. Republicans aren’t on board.
The DHS has been shut down since Feb. 14. Only about half of the 260,000 DHS employees have been paid regularly since then. Not among them are Transportation Security Agency (TSA) members, many of whom have called out, resulting in painfully long lines at airport security checkpoints. President Donald Trump has sent ICE agents, who are still getting paid, to some airports to help check IDs.
On Monday, DHS officials said most TSA agents had received back pay, after Trump signed a memo ordering them to be paid. But it’s unclear if agents will be paid on a regular basis moving forward as the shutdown continues.
Cruz, Graham, and the rest of Congress are set to return to Washington on April 14.
