OIA officials say

the addition of 18 customs officers will reduce lines for international flights at what has become one of the busiest airports in the U.S.

Orlando International Airport will add 18 new Customs and Border Protection officers by the end of 2018, U.S. Rep. Val Demings’ office revealed Tuesday, which airport officials say will reduce lines for international flights at what has become one of the busiest airports in the country.

The increase in staff, which includes three new officers arriving this summer, will be the first permanent staffing increase at OIA for Customs officers since 2009, even as traffic at the airport grew by 89 percent from 2009 to 2016.

Orlando’s airport ranks as the nation’s 11th and the world’s 39th busiest airport. Of more than 45 million annual passengers, about 6 million are international and must go through Customs.

Customs officers are separate from Transportation and Security Administration officers, who screen all passengers upon departure.

TSA has said Orlando will receive more of its officers this summer as well.

The new agents will be paid for with the $7.7 million included in the omnibus appropriations bill to fix Customs and Border Protection’s shortfall of more than 2,100 officers.

“We haven’t had any net increase in almost 10 years,” airport CEO Phil Brown said, though he added the exact number of current officers at the airport has not been disclosed by the agency. He said he was “extremely grateful” to Demings, saying airport officials have lobbied her to help increase staffing almost since her election in 2016.

Brown and Greater Orlando Aviation Authority Chairman Frank Kruppenbacher publicly appealed for more Customs officers last summer, writing a letter to lawmakers stating that 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.”

In April, a bipartisan group of Florida members of Congress, including U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Sen. Republican Marco Rubio, also appealed to Senate and House committees in charge of the Customs budget for more staffers.

Demings introduced legislation earlier in the year to pay for the additional staff and then pushed for more funding via her position on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.

“Orlando International Airport is one of America’s best, and Orlando is the number one visitor destination in our great country—something for which we should all be very proud,” Demings said in a statement.

Brown also cited $4 million worth of facial recognition monitors, already in place for arriving flights and planned to be in place for departing plights sometime this summer, and plans for an expanded federal facility at the airport.

“We’ll have more people, more technology and more space to ensure international arrivals have the best experience they can here,” Brown said.

Earlier this year, airport officials protested plans to rotate several Customs officers to the southwestern border with Mexico for three months, with Brown warning the plan would only add “more demands on already overburdened CBP officers who have been stretched to the limit to meet ever-increasing international visitation demands.”

Ultimately, three officers and possibly a fourth were sent to the border for 90 days, Brown said.