Sending air marshals to the Southern border to give water to illegal immigrants is being attacked for its impact on the safety of passengers and crews.

In March 2023, Severo Torres was subdued by passengers aboard a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston after he tried to stab a flight attendant and attempted to open a door of the plane, according to NBC.

Sonya LaBosco, a retired supervisory federal air marshal who speaks for the Air Marshal National Council, said that was a prime example of the risks the policy presented, according to the New York Post.

Air marshals were sent to the border at the time, which meant that when violence erupted in the air, the passengers and crew were on their own.

REPORT: Union says the major in-flight attack on a United Airlines flight could have been avoided if air marshals weren’t deployed to the southern border to take care of illegals

“Because we had deployed air marshals to the border, there was no air marshals on that flight”… pic.twitter.com/PDwPEpWfri

— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) July 5, 2024

“Because we had deployed air marshals to the border, there was no air marshals on that flight,” she said.

“So our worst fears were coming true every day with the in-flight incidents that were occurring that air marshals would have been on those flights to keep passengers from being injured,” she said.

LaBosco said the duties air marshals were given at the border were “absolutely ridiculous.”

“That day — and any other day — air marshals have been deployed to the border, they’ve been there merely ‘handing out water, making sandwiches, Uber Eats runs … bringing diapers and stuff into the facilities and unloading trucks,’” LaBosco said.

LaBosco said relaxing air security while millions of illegal immigrants are roaming the country is an invitation to have the next 9/11.

“The long-haul flights are super important for us to be on because those are the same flights the 9/11 hijackers actually targeted and took that day on 9/11.”

A report from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security said that the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees air marshals, “did not perform a risk assessment to determine the operational impacts of air marshal border deployments on transportation security.”

“Without establishing performance measures and assessing risks related to deploying air marshals, TSA cannot ensure deployments did not impact FAMs’ mission to mitigate potential risks and threats to our nation’s transportation system,” the report stated. FAMs is an acronym for the Federal Air Marshals Service.

The report said that although officials of the Federal Air Marshals Service said that deploying air marshals to the border did not compromise flight safety, the marshals themselves who responded to a survey contradicted that opinion.

Yesterday, Mayorkas doubled down on diverting Federal Air Marshals from protecting Americans on commercial flights to perform administrative duties at the Southern Border. Unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/YSQUasqnU4

— Ashley Hinson (@RepAshleyHinson) April 11, 2024

“With respect to costs, TSA incurred approximately $45 million in travel and payroll costs associated with the deployment of air marshals to the Southwest border from May 2019 to August 2023,” the report said.

“TSA could not assess the operational impacts to its primary mission of safeguarding the Nation’s transportation system while TSA deployed air marshals to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Southwest border. This occurred because TSA did not establish baseline quantifiable and measurable goals from which it could measure the effectiveness of its primary, day-to-day operations,” the report said.

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