“The Senate early Friday morning approved Homeland Security funds to pay Transportation Security Administration agents and most other agencies, but not the immigration enforcement operations at the heart of the budget impasse that has jammed airports, disrupted travel and imposed financial hardship on workers.
The deal, which the Senate approved unanimously without a roll call, next goes to the House, which is expected to consider it Friday.
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The deal did not include any of the restraints Democrats have demanded as they sought to rein in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
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The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions in extra funds to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the immigration officers are still being paid despite the lapse.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us–congress-homeland-security-042604889.html
Why some airports have long security lines, and others are a breeze
https://travel.yahoo.com/advice/safety/articles/why-airports-hours-long-security-210750655.html
“”ICE agents are not trained or certified in aviation security,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley previously said in a statement to USA TODAY. “TSA officers spend months learning to detect explosives, weapons, and threats specifically designed to evade detection at checkpoints – skills that require specialized instruction, hands-on practice, and ongoing recertification. You cannot improvise that. Putting untrained personnel at security checkpoints does not fill a gap. It creates one.”
Early reports from some travelers indicated that ICE’s presence wasn’t doing much to improve conditions – and for some employees it may be more disruptive than helpful.
“The employees that actually work at the airport, they’re afraid of coming to work because they were afraid that their immigration status would cause them to be detained or removed from the airport,” Johnny Jones, secretary and treasurer of the Association of Federal Government Employees local 1040 representing TSA workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said in a March 24 press briefing. “A couple of restaurants did not actually open at the airport because they had no workers show up.”
While Harmon-Marshall doesn’t expect ICE’s presence to pose a risk to aviation security, it could have other adverse impacts. “What I do think their presence is going to do is intimidate the traveling public,” he said.”
https://travel.yahoo.com/advice/safety/articles/tsa-officers-skilled-eye-ices-070142424.html
The Democrats tried to fund the TSA. Republicans rejected it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5794925-tsa-funding-senate-rules/
“That is saying a lot, because the scientific justification for the TSA’s rule has always been weak, given that the conditions on airplanes are not conducive to COVID-19 transmission. The ventilation systems on commercial aircraft, which mix outdoor air with air recycled through HEPA filters and limit airflow between rows, help explain why there were few outbreaks associated with commercial flights even before vaccines were available.
“The risk of contracting COVID-19 during air travel is low,” an October 2020 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted. “Despite substantial numbers of travelers, the number of suspected and confirmed cases of in-flight COVID-19 transmission between passengers around the world appears small.”
Sebastian Hoehl, a researcher at the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany, concurred in an interview with Scientific American the following month. “An airplane cabin is probably one of the most secure conditions you can be in,” he observed.”
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“On February 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped recommending general indoor masking in parts of the country it rates as “low” or “medium” risk, which as of last week covered more than 98 percent of the U.S. population. According to the CDC, then, it is safe to dispense with masks in stores, churches, schools, bars, and restaurants—environments where the risk of virus transmission is much higher than it is on airplanes.
Yet the TSA said it extended its mask rule “at CDC’s recommendation” so the agency could develop “a revised policy framework” based on “the latest science.” Mask rules for transportation are complicated, said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, because people are “moving from one zone to another”—an explanation that makes little sense when virtually the entire country is in the same “zone” as far as the CDC’s mask advice goes.”
“The TSA blog carries constant reports of weapons confiscated from people who forgot to remove them from carry-on bags. But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that “TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.”
Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, “in the ballpark” of an 80 percent failure rate.”