TSA Not Assessing Risk When Sending Air Marshals to Border Instead of the Skies
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) cannot guarantee that sending members of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) to the U.S.-Mexico border did not hamper flight safety.
That’s the takeaway of a new report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG), which faulted TSA for agreeing to send federal air marshals to the border without studying the impact of the assignments.
“TSA cannot assure deployments did not impact FAMS’ mission to mitigate potential risks and threats to our Nation’s transportation system,” the watchdog report said.
The report comes as air marshals deal with elevated instances of unruly behavior on U.S. flights, which has been at an elevated level since the COVID-19 pandemic.
TSA-CBP Deal
TSA has been sending air marshals to the border since 2019, when it struck a deal with fellow DHS agency Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Since then, more than 1,114 air marshals were deployed to the border doing everything from escorting migrants to securing facilities to conducting searches to doing hospital checks.
The move prompted the Air Marshal National Council to file a complaint with DHS OIG requesting an investigation, with the council noting that air marshals were being assigned tasks that had “no relation to TSA’s core mission of transportation security.”
While exact numbers are not public, Air Marshal National Council head David Londo said between 70 and 100 are deployed each month under current policies.
TSA also incurred about $45 million in travel and payroll costs from the program but was reimbursed by CBP.
Report Details
In its report, the inspector general found that TSA did not establish baseline goals to measure the effectiveness of day-to-day operations. It also failed to conduct a risk assessment on the impact of sending air marshals to the southern border on the agency’s mission.
And while investigators found no evidence that deployments impacted the number of flights with air marshals on board, air marshals who were sent to the border told investigators they believed their deployments negatively affected flight coverage.
The report made one recommendation for FAMS to assess risk and measure operational impacts when deploying air marshals to the border. TSA concurred with that recommendation but defended itself with Administrator David Pekoske writing “[Air marshal] executives and managers continually monitor and assess risks and threats and adjust operations and federal air marshal deployments.”
Congressional Action
The issue has attracted attention on Capitol Hill.
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced the No FAMS at the Border Act (S.3808).
It would bar the deployment of federal air marshals to the border unless the homeland security secretary declares a crisis. The legislation has yet to advance in committee.