House Oversight Committee requests information on reported Trump plan to send TSA employees to border

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday requested information related to President Trump’s reported plan to send Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees to the border.

“We are deeply concerned that pulling hundreds of TSA employees away from their critical missions at our nation’s airports and sending them to the southern border will weaken aviation security and significantly increase the risks faced by the American people,” Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to the TSA.

“An obvious and enormous problem with this plan is that TSA employees already have full-time jobs, and the agency needs them to fulfill their critical mission at our nation’s airports, as well as to address vulnerabilities identified by the Government Accountability Office and the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security,” they added.

{mosads}Multiple outlets reported that the Department of Homeland Security had started reassigning agents from airports to the southern border in response to a surge in migrant crossings.

The agency in recent months has sent Coast Guard teams and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who usually conduct criminal probes to the border.

Customs and Border Protection officials detained 109,144 migrants at the southern border last month, marking the highest number in more than a decade.

“Based on our work, we have grave concerns about the wisdom of any proposal to pull hundreds of TSA employees away from their critical security mission at our nation’s airports to fulfill the President’s immigration policies,” Cummings and Lynch wrote.