TSA Can’t Confirm Security Impact of Border Marshals

(IntegrityTimes.com) – The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) has been part of American aviation security since it was founded in 1961 in response to the hijacking of a commercial airliner.

Their primary responsibilities are still to detect, deter, and defeat hostile acts targeting the United States. This is accomplished by deploying specially trained undercover Federal Air Marshalls on US-flagged aircraft worldwide. However, FAMS operates under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who have been diverting their agents to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in recent years.

The Air Marshal National Council has filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General regarding the reassignments. In their filing they point out that their new assignments have no relation to the FAMS core mission of transportation security. The highly trained air marshals are now performing transportation duties, hospital watches, entry control, law enforcement searches, and even welfare checks. The Council has accused both TSA and FAMS leadership of waste, fraud, and abuse of their authority.

According to an inspector general report released on July 2, the TSA cannot assess the impact on air security caused by redirecting the air marshals to assist with increased migration. The report explains that as the TSA has no baseline goals for measuring the effectiveness of the FAMS primary operations so there is no way to tell. They have not conducted the risk assessment in order to gauge the effect deploying the air marshals to the border could have on transportation security.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske objected to the implication that his agency does not conduct pre-deployment operational assessments. He claims that the Air Marshall executives and managers assess the risks and threats and adjust the operations and deployments all the time. Between 2019 and 2023 there have been 1,114 air marshals deployed to the southwest border. Investigators did analyze flight data between 2016 and 2023 finding no evidence the border deployments affected the number of air marshals on flights. Air marshals at the border who were surveyed in 2023 disagreed though, saying their assignments did reduce flight coverage by FAMS.

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