A growing number of federal air marshals are threatening to disobey direct orders to relocate to areas along the southwestern border to report for immigration enforcement duty.
Dozens of marshals have promised to disobey the order in protest, Air Marshal National Council President David Londo told The Washington Examiner. President Joe Biden has ordered U.S. air marshals to the southern border to make up for a lack of Border Patrol agents, a move expected to leave the marshals at one-eighth their normal coverage of U.S. flights.
“The rank and file air marshals are going to refuse to deploy and risk termination,” Londo said. “You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of.”
“Morale is so destroyed from this,” he added. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The Daily Wire reported that the Transportation Security Administration has denied Londo's claims, noting it is “entirely inaccurate and does not reflect the critical and professional law enforcement role these officers perform."
The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement as well, saying the claim was wrong.
“The suggestion that flights are being left unprotected is completely false,” the department said in a statement to Fox News. “TSA takes its responsibility to secure the skies for the traveling public very seriously. We will continue to protect commercial flights though [sic] our multi-layered security processes, including through the Federal Air Marshal Service which supports this critical mission on the ground and onboard aircrafts.”
But the Biden administration has a history of lying its backside off to the American people, so there's that: Why would the nation's air marshals make this up? What's the point of doing so?
The Daily Wire noted further that last year, the Federal Air Marshal Service requested that agents volunteer to spend 30-day tours along the southwestern border to assist Border Patrol and U.S. Customs agents in processing a record number of illegal migrants who have flooded into the country by the millions after Biden reversed all of former President Donald Trump's immigration and border security policies -- which led to record low illegal crossings.
But last month, the Biden regime made the Air Marshal deployments mandatory.
In a letter the Washington Examiner obtained, Londo wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, TSA Administrator David Pekoske, and Federal Air Marshal Service Director Tirrell Stevenson that the rank-and-file marshals have lost "confidence" in their leaders to lead.
“As it stands today, we believe that many FAMs will refuse to deploy, believing the order is reckless and leaving our country vulnerable to attack,” Londo wrote. “On behalf of our membership, stop these dangerous and irresponsible deployments before our adversaries take advantage of the opportunity this policy has provided.”
Fox News Digital noted further:
Londo said "highly-skilled" air marshals deployed to the border this week "are being made to perform mainly non-law enforcement civilian humanitarian duties." He told the Examiner that includes "heating up sandwiches," driving illegal immigrants in custody to the hospital and waiting inside for hours on hospital watch, and effectively babysitting adults who are already in confined spaces.
The National Association of Police Organizations issued a statement backing the air marshals’ protest, Fox News added.
“The Federal Air Marshal Service is understaffed and covering the fewest number of flights since before September 11, 2001,” the association said. “We strongly question the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to divert much-needed aviation security to the southern border, especially as we enter the busiest travel season of the year, particularly as a federal emergency has not been declared at the border.”
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