TSA Can’t Assure Mexican Border Air Marshal Assignments Did Not Impact Transportation Security

The federal agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation’s transportation system has no idea how aviation security was impacted when it plucked Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) agents from their critical duties to help with the Mexican border crisis. FAMS operates under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and in the last few years the agency has forced the highly trained aviation security specialists to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with the onslaught of illegal immigrants entering the country under Biden’s disastrous open border policies. The deployments outraged air marshals around the country and led to accusations of fraud, waste, and abuse of authority by TSA and FAMS leadership for unlawfully sending assets to the southern border to perform duties unrelated to transportation. FAMS is charged with protecting commercial passenger flights by deterring and countering the risk of terrorist activity, a mission impossible to fulfill from the southwest border.

When the highly trained law enforcement agents were reassigned to babysit the influx of illegal immigrants the Air Marshal National Council, which represents thousands of officers nationwide, filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General and requested that the watchdog investigate the questionable deployment of TSA assets to El Paso, Laredo and McAllen Texas, San Diego California and Tucson and Yuma Arizona. The council pointed out that the air marshals were assigned to perform hospital watch, transportation duties, law enforcement searches, welfare checks and entry control, which have no relation to TSA’s core mission of transportation security. The first recent wave of air marshals—45 officers and two supervisors—was dispatched to El Paso and Yuma on October 30, 2022, for 21-day rotations. More were assigned later to other busy locations overrun with migrants.

The TSA admits it does not know the operational impacts that the air marshal border deployments had on transportation security. “TSA cannot assure deployments did not impact FAMS’ mission to mitigate potential risks and threats to our Nation’s transportation system,” according to a DHS report issued days ago thanks to the Air Marshal National Council’s request to probe the matter. The agency did not bother to establish baseline quantifiable and measurable goals from which it could measure the effectiveness of its primary operations while air marshals were assigned to assist CBP at the southwest border, the 17-page report says. TSA incurred approximately $45 million in travel and payroll costs, but the agency was eventually reimbursed by CBP, which also operates under DHS.

Under the agreement with CBP, air marshals played the role of “immigration officers,” to perform the following duties: Escorting migrants from the point of apprehension to processing, between various Border Patrol Sector facilities, or to another entity with jurisdiction over post-processing custody; escorting migrants to and from local health providers and hospitals; conducting searches, including pat downs, and placing or removing handcuffs or restraint devices on migrants in custody before they are transported; securing CBP facilities, including detention cells, and authorizing access to various entry controlled points; escorting migrants between processing checkpoints within the facility; assisting with staffing the unaccompanied female housing facility; observing migrants in holding areas to assess their safety and well-being while awaiting processing or transportation.

Perhaps to discourage more Mexican border deployments, the DHS IG report, which has large redactions to protect sensitive information, stresses that FAMS is a risk and intelligence-based federal law enforcement organization. “TSA employs approximately [redacted] air marshals to assess, address, and mitigate potential risks and threats to our Nation’s transportation system,” the DHS watchdog writes, stating the obvious. “In addition to providing in-flight security, air marshals carry out a variety of other law enforcement–related functions.” Babysitting illegal immigrants is most certainly not one of them. FAMS was created in 1961 as a small force of only 18 “sky marshals” to counter airplane hijackers. After the 2001 terrorist attacks the force grew tremendously and plays a major role in protecting the nation’s civil aviation system.