Last year, passengers on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston were forced to subdue a man who was trying to stab a flight attendant because airport security was not on the scene due to ongoing deployments at the southern border, The Washington Post has learned.
At the height of the border crisis, the federal government deployed 200 air marshals to the border for 21-day deployments, threatening major air traffic, Sonia Labosco, a former federal air marshal speaking for the National Council of Air Marshals, told The Washington Post.
LaBosco knew from her own experience that security officers are always present on the Los Angeles to Boston route, and she became even more worried when passengers on Flight 2609 in March 2023 began contacting her, knowing they would have to deal with threatening passengers themselves.
“There were no airport security officers on that flight because we had airport security officers at the border,” she said.
“In-flight accidents were occurring almost daily, making our worst fears come true. Air marshals should have been on board those flights to ensure passengers were not injured.”
Airport security officers were stationed at the border that day and on other days, but they were only “distributing water, making sandwiches, doing Uber Eats deliveries … bringing diapers and other things into the facilities, unloading trucks,” LaBosco said, adding that it was “totally ridiculous.”
There is a big concern that by removing airport security officers from law enforcement duties and freeing up millions of migrants to cross the southern border illegally and take commercial flights, another 9/11 could easily happen, LaBosco said.
“Long-haul flights are very important to us
Because these are the same planes that the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and took over on that day.”Sonia LaBosco of the National Council of Air Marshals
Federal authorities have conducted a major crackdown in recent months on suspected ISIS terrorists and terrorist smuggling rings who have been released into the U.S. from the southern border, some of whom remain at large.
“The long-haul flights are very important to us because they are the same flights that the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and flew on on the day of 9/11.”
The concerns were highlighted in a recent report by a federal watchdog on airline safety while understaffed airport security officers have their hands full at the southern border.
The report said the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees air marshals, failed to “assess the operational impact” the deployment had on its “primary mission of protecting the nation’s transportation system.”
“Without establishing performance measures and assessing the risks associated with the deployment of air marshals, TSA cannot ensure that the deployment did not impact FAM’s mission of mitigating potential risks and threats to our nation’s transportation system…” the report states.
The watchdog also found that the TSA spent $45 million on Border Patrol deployments between May 2019 and August 2023.
“In terms of costs, TSA incurred approximately $45 million in travel and personnel costs associated with the deployment of airport security officers to the southwest border from May 2019 through August 2023,” the report states.
