U.S. air marshals are reportedly staging a “mutiny” on the Biden administration over its failed immigration policies as the southern border crisis worsens.
This comes after the Federal Air Marshal Service asked for volunteers to deploy to the U.S.-Mexico border due to the shortage of Border Patrol agents.
Dozens of air marshals are planning to refuse mandatory deployment orders to the southern border, putting them at risk of termination and leaving American fliers more vulnerable to threats ahead of the busy holiday travel season.
David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, said that “rank and file air marshals are going to refuse to deploy and risk termination” as the Biden administration plan would strip 99 percent of commercial airline flights from federal protection.
“You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of,” Londo said.
Londo added that this week’s deployment of “highly-skilled” air marshals to the border included “heating up sandwiches,” driving illegal immigrants in custody to the hospital and waiting inside for hours on hospital watch, and essentially babysitting adults who are already in confined spaces.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), meanwhile, denied that air marshals were being deployed to the border to perform such menial tasks, calling Londo’s claims “entirely inaccurate and does not reflect the critical and professional law enforcement role these officers perform.”
“Federal Air Marshals are performing law enforcement support to the mission at the southwest border,” TSA said in a statement. “The TSA Federal Air Marshal Service is a highly valued member of the DHS law enforcement team and has an ever-expanding role within DHS, working closely with other U.S. and international law enforcement agencies to safeguard the nation’s transportation systems.”
The U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers since President Joe Biden announced in April that it would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has reported that nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border for the fiscal year ending in September, breaching the already-historic 1.7 million migrant detainees last year.
