In news unlikely to surprise anyone, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close aide, Corey Lewandowski, allegedly devised a plan to shut down TSA PreCheck and Global Entry without first consulting the White House.
The decision, it has been reported, took the Trump administration by surprise, and it was an intervention from the White House that forced the Department of Homeland Security to perform a spectacular U-turn on its suspension of TSA PreCheck.
While DHS has maintained its suspension of Global Entry at ports of entry across the United States, the decision has left travel experts baffled, who argue that the system is designed to reduce strained resources and manpower constraints.
The so-called ’emergency measures’ devised by Noem and Lewandowski were introduced at 6:00 am ET on Sunday, a week into a funding crisis, prompted by the failure of Democrat and Republican lawmakers to agree on $64 billion in appropriations for DHS.
Airlines were given less than 12 hours’ notice that TSA PreCheck and Global Entry were being suspended until further notice, prompting a furious response from aviation and travel lobby groups, who accused lawmakers of punishing innocent travellers.
As the 6:00 am deadline came and went, there were reports that many TSA PreCheck lanes remained open, a signal perhaps of how little notice the DHS had given its own workforce of the plan.
Within hours, the TSA performed a spectacular U-turn, announcing that PreCheck would, in fact, remain open. The agency warned, however, that PreCheck lanes could be closed on an airport-by-airport basis, dependent on staffing levels on the day.
Global Entry remains shuttered even though the largely automated system requires little intervention from Customs and Border Protection officers and removes strain from regular immigration lines that are now taking the brunt of the suspension.
One of the fiercest critics of the DHS shutdown of PreCheck was the U.S. Travel Association, whose chief executive, Geoff Freeman, described it as a “crisis of its own making.”
Freeman has called on Global Entry to be reopened, although those pleas have, so far, fallen on deaf ears.
In a statement, the DHS stated, “Until funding is restored, all travelers should expect a process that does not sacrifice security. ”
