A House Republican is sounding the alarm over how the Transportation Security Administration screens agents from foreign countries following a hearing on TSA’s relationships with America’s adversaries.
TSA uses the passports and information provided by foreign countries, including state sponsors of terrorism, to vet agents flying directly into the United States, Melanie Harvey, TSA’s executive assistant administrator for security operations, testified at Tuesday’s House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security hearing.
Subcommittee Chairman Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) described the TSA policy as “insane & reckless” in a post on X and expanded on what he called a “national security concern” in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“It’s ridiculous,” Gimenez said. “How do you trust anything that comes from a nation that’s on the list of the state sponsors of terrorism? How do you allow them into our facilities when [TSA’s] job originated as a result of a terrorist attack?”
The Florida Republican expressed skepticism that nations on the list of state sponsors of terrorism would act in good faith or abide by the rules and said, for example, “You can always tell the Cuban officials, look, you’re on the state sponsor of terrorism. You’re not going to see our systems” even if the U.S. continued to access Cuba’s systems.
There are only four countries on the Department of State’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list: Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Iran. Of those countries, Cuba is the only one with direct flights into the U.S., according to TSA testimony at the hearing.
TSA did not comment on how the agency is able to protect the safety of U.S. citizens while using information provided by state sponsors of terrorism to vet agents from those countries. TSA press secretary Robert Langston told the Washington Examiner, “During the hearing itself, both leaders addressed the rationale for security exchanges with those nations that have direct flights into the United States.”
The Washington Examiner consulted with three national security experts for insight on how TSA is able to protect people despite having to trust information being received from state sponsors of terrorism.
“I would think TSA would use any information available,” John Bolton, national security adviser during the Trump administration, told the Washington Examiner. “Doesn’t mean they trust it or believe it, but consider it for what it may be worth.”
Javed Ali, who served in senior roles at the National Counterterrorism Center, National Security Council, and FBI under the Trump administration, explained to the Washington Examiner that TSA works with law enforcement and intelligence agencies through organizations such as the Terrorist Screening Center and National Vetting Center “to ensure the timely and proper review of all inbound individuals into the United States.”
He said the agencies use “a variety of databases and screening processes” and that people attempting to come from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism “would almost certainly receive a higher level of screening prior to their arrival.”
Despite the coordination between agencies, Ali explained that if government agents from state sponsors of terrorism used false or altered information to get into the country, “that would potentially make it harder to determine their actual identities. … This is the challenge of counterintelligence.” He mentioned an example of Russian illegal immigrants who were arrested and deported in 2010, all of whom had entered the U.S. using false biographic information.
On the other hand, the security expert also noted that all 19 9/11 hijackers came into the country using their real names with U.S. visas stamped at embassies overseas. “The problem in that case,” Ali said, “is that the terrorism links to most of those individuals (except the first who arrived in January 2000) were not known to the U.S. government at the time.”
Lee Kair, principal and head of transportation and innovation practice at the Chertoff Group, explained in an interview with the Washington Examiner why it is important for the U.S. and other countries to be able to “communicate effectively to understand each other’s protocols so that they can ensure the security of all passengers.”
Kair, who has served as TSA regional director for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as the Department of Homeland Security attache to Germany, shared that he was the one responsible for the TSA response to the 2009 Christmas Day attempted airplane bombing when an al Qaeda member tried to detonate an explosive on final approach.
He explained that the “relationship that the U.S. government had with its European counterparts was critical,” in this case because TSA had inspectors who had been to the airport and had seen their operations, “so we were able to very quickly understand what caused the security incident and what mitigations we needed to immediately put into place to thwart other similar attacks that might be underway at the time.”
“To the extent any country starts to restrict access to other countries observing their [last point of diversion] operations, that’s a very dangerous precedent to set,” Kair warned. “Because then other countries might start limiting our access as well.”
Tuesday’s hearing came in response to what Gimenez called a “security breach” when the State Department and TSA hosted Cuban agents for a May 20 tour of Miami International Airport. They reportedly did not coordinate with or notify the airport authority, state and local officials, Congress, or senior TSA leaders such as Administrator David Pekoske about the visit.
Gimenez pointed to the date of the tour, Cuban Independence Day, and said, “I don’t consider that to be coincidental” and that holding the visit in Miami, which has a large Cuban population, “was really kind of slap in the face of the Cuban community there, and we took it as such.”
“Maybe the people from TSA didn’t know what it meant,” he said. “But the Cuban officials who were visiting, they knew what it meant, and so they did it gladly on that day. I wonder who set it up [for] that day. Was it us or was it them?”
Gimenez introduced a bipartisan bill after the May 20 visit to prevent agents from state sponsors of terrorism from gaining access to TSA facilities at American airports, called the Secure Airports From Enemies Act.
Co-signed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), the bill would bar people representing or acting on behalf of countries on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism from the secured area of an airport, the security identification display area of an airport, the sterile area of an airport, and the air cargo area of an airport.
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“I don’t know what the president is going to do,” Gimenez said of the bill. “I don’t know what the Senate is going to do, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to pass it here [in the House].”
The Washington Examiner reached out to DHS for comment.