Air Marshals Sound Alarm on Border Deployment, Warn Air Travel Is ‘Less Safe’

A traveler walks past a Southwest Airlines airplane as it taxies from a gate at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in Baltimore, Md., on Oct. 11, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

An air marshal group sounded the alarm on Nov. 28 that air travel is becoming less safe as marshals are being sent to the U.S.–Mexico border.

“We have been decimated. We have been depleted. We’re on less than 1 percent of flights,” Air Marshal National Council head Sonia Labosco told Fox News on Nov. 28. “These ground-based duties that they’re pulling us out of the sky to go to the border are just demolishing our chances at stopping another 9/11.”

Earlier this month, the Biden administration ordered the Federal Air Marshals to start mandatory deployments to the southern border amid a surge in illegal immigration since early 2021, according to reports.

Tirrell Stevenson, a senior official in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), issued a Nov. 14 email notice that states “as part of a DHS wide effort, (LE/FAMS) has been called upon to redeploy Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) to the Southwest Border,” according to the Boston Herald.

A spokesperson for the TSA said air marshals were also sent to the border in 2019, noting that it’s a temporary measure. The agency didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

“The deployment of Federal Air Marshals to execute [the Department of Homeland Security’s] mission at the southwest border on a reimbursable basis is temporary. At the same time, our expert Federal Air Marshal Service workforce continues their important work in transportation security,” reads a statement from the TSA to the Herald and other outlets.

But Labosco said on Nov. 28 that the Biden administration hasn’t responded to her group’s concerns about air travel safety.

“We actually wrote him another letter over the weekend because we had a level four and a level three incident. Level four means that they tried to breach the cockpit,” she told the network. “Level three, we had two of those, which means there were life-threatening behaviors on one of those aircraft. An individual had a straight razor to a passenger’s throat. So these are very serious incidents.”

Incident

Several days ago, a Utah man was arrested and charged with carrying a razor on a JetBlue plane before holding the blade to a woman’s throat during the flight, according to a federal complaint.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City filed a complaint on Nov. 22 against Merrill Darrell Fackrell, charging him with carrying a weapon on an aircraft and assault with a dangerous weapon on an aircraft, prosecutors said in a Nov. 23 statement.

Prosecutors say Fackrell boarded a JetBlue flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 21 that was headed for Salt Lake City. He was in a window seat next to a married couple, according to the complaint.

During the flight, Fackrell placed his hand over the woman’s screen and told her to pause her movie. She took off her headphones and saw that Fackrell was holding what appeared to be a knife inches from her throat, according to the complaint.

Migrants walk along the U.S. border fence to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico in El Paso, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Data

U.S. Customs and Border Protection—which, like the TSA, is overseen by DHS—reported a significant spike in illegal immigrant encounters at the southern border, according to data released in November. A separate group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), stated that roughly 5.5 million people have illegally crossed into the United States since President Joe Biden took over in January 2021.

Dan Stein, president of FAIR, told NTD during a recent interview on “Capitol Report” that nearly 2.8 million illegal border crossers were stopped in the fiscal year that ended in September, a record high.

“If you look at the entire period, it’s about 5.5 million since Biden took office,” Stein said, noting that projections estimate the cost to taxpayers to be $20 billion.

On Nov. 14, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’s invoking the invasion clauses of the Texas and U.S. constitutions to deploy Texas National Guard members to the border, construct the border wall, allow the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest illegal immigrants, and send some military vehicles to the border.

Republicans in the House say they'll attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for what they say is a dereliction of duty in handling the illegal immigration crisis. However, some experts have recently told The Epoch Times that it’s not likely that Mayorkas will be removed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.