are worried now that 10 federal customs and border patrol officers from Orlando International Airport are being sent to the southwest border.
Feds plan to transfer 10 agents to the nation’s southwest border soon
Ten federal customs and border patrol officers from the Orlando International Airport are being reassigned in January to the southwest border, which is worrying local airport officials about potential delays for international passengers.
Orlando International officials sent a Dec. 22 letter appealing to several U.S. Senators and Congressional leaders about losing 10 officers for 120 days who would then be replaced by another group, with “the rotation continuing indefinitely.”
“We believe taking 10 CBP officers from their important and critical duties at OIA will pose a serious and noticeable safety and security problem for the traveling public and the thousands of employees at OIA,” said the letter signed by Frank Kruppenbacher, the chairman of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which oversees the Orlando airport, and the airport’s CEO Phillip Brown.
“This directive will seriously diminish the security at OIA by adding more demands on already overburdened CBP officers who have been stretched to the limit to meet ever increasing international visitation demands.”
The airport also uses non-security personnel at the federal inspection areas that are located at Airsides 1 and 4, a spokesman said. Losing the 10 officers would overburden the current staff and would slow down international passengers arriving at Orlando International, he said.
The spokesman declined to say how many CBP officers are staffed at the airport, calling it sensitive information from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The federal agency, which pays the officers’ salaries, did not respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, reacted to the letter with a Facebook post that said she shared her “profound concerns to CBP.”
“I am scheduled to meet with senior CBP officials to discuss staffing levels at MCO, and I will urge them to reverse this misguided directive,” she wrote late last week.
The meeting is Jan. 9, her spokesman said.
The changes come during a busy travel year.
The airport was expecting 3 million passengers in and out
during the holiday season, breaking records — with the second- and third-busiest days of the stretch expected Friday and Saturday.
About 44 million passengers used Orlando International over a period of 12 months that ended in October, a record.
Orlando ranked No. 13 for the most commercial passengers among U.S. airports in 2016, according to data collected by the FAA.
In August, Kruppenbacher and Brown wrote a letter to politicians that complained the CBP staffing “has now reached the crisis point.”
During peak hours, there were so many international passengers, “the arrivals hall [becomes] congested and [prevents] passengers from exiting the aircraft until passengers from earlier flights have left Customs and Immigration,” their letter said.
The Aug. 29 letter did not appear to help Orlando’s pleas for more officers since none were added, an airport spokesman said.