LOCAL COLUMN
OPINION: Don't outsource airport security to the lowest bidder
New Mexicans should not have to wonder whether the last line of defense before they board a plane was awarded to the cheapest contractor.
Most of us can still picture the grainy footage from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001: 19 hijackers 鈥� at least 15 of them armed with blades 鈥� walking through private airport security at Boston Logan and Dulles international airports without being stopped. No one detected them. In the aftermath, a bipartisan Congress made a deliberate decision: Airport screening was too important to leave to the market. The Transportation Security Administration was born as a federal workforce, accountable to the public, not to a profit margin.
Now, a quarter-century later 鈥� as we prepare to mark that terrible anniversary 鈥� some in Washington seem intent on forgetting why we made that choice.
The current administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 lays out a plan to privatize TSA "in slices." It would start with roughly 200 small and rural airports, eliminate about 8,400 federal positions 鈥� roughly 14% of the TSA workforce 鈥� and claim approximately $52 million in savings by handing screening over to private contractors. Project 2025 explicitly called for this approach, and the administration is now executing it. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, pressed the TSA administration for answers regarding privatization. One thing was made abundantly clear: The push is already underway.
The "savings" argument deserves scrutiny. That $52 million figure comes almost entirely from cutting pay, reducing benefits and accepting the higher turnover that comes with lower-wage contractor jobs 鈥� not from any genuine leap in efficiency. Twenty airports already operate under TSA's Screening Partnership Program, using private screeners under strict federal standards and close federal oversight. Proponents point to those programs as proof the model works. But scaling privatization nationwide while simultaneously slashing the federal workforce and chasing budget savings is something very different. It means less experienced officers at checkpoints, a constant churn of new hires learning on the job and weakened federal oversight 鈥� especially at small regional airports that already struggle to recruit and retain people.
New Mexico will feel this directly. Safe, reliable screening isn't an abstraction here 鈥� it's the infrastructure that keeps our economy moving. Tourism, business travel, military personnel moving to and from our bases, and the researchers and contractors tied to our national laboratories all depend on dependable operations at the sa国际传媒官网网页入口 International Sunport and our regional airports in Santa Fe, Clovis, Farmington and Hobbs. Destabilizing checkpoint staffing in the name of short-term contract savings is a direct threat to all of it.
Federal TSA positions are also exactly the kind of jobs New Mexico needs to hold onto: stable, middle-class employment with training, benefits and civil-service protections. They offer a real pathway into the middle class for workers who might otherwise be stuck in low-wage, no-benefit positions. Replacing them with contractor jobs will almost certainly mean lower pay, higher turnover and less experienced officers 鈥� particularly at the smaller airports where staffing is already thin.
Accountability matters, too. When a federal officer makes a mistake, there are clear mechanisms for review: internal investigations, inspector general reports, congressional hearings. When a private contractor cuts corners, responsibility disappears into layers of corporate management and contract language the public never sees. The closer we get to the plane door, the more important it is that the people making judgment calls answer to the public 鈥� not to shareholders.
Some are now floating privatization as a fix for shutdown chaos, arguing that private contractors won't be held hostage to Washington budget fights. That's an illusion. Contractors depend on federal appropriations just as surely as federal employees do. The real problem is using national security workers as leverage in manufactured budget crises 鈥� and the solution to that problem is political accountability, not a corporate badge.
New Mexico's congressional delegation should oppose any forced privatization of TSA and any cuts to the federal screening workforce. Local officials, airport boards and chambers of commerce should decline to apply for privatization programs and instead advocate loudly for fully funded, fully staffed federal screening at every airport that serves this state.
The next time you stand in the early-morning line at the Sunport, ask yourself: Who do you want making the call on what goes on that plane 鈥� a trained federal officer accountable to the public, or a contractor whose bottom line depends on how much the company can cut from the security budget?
In closing, I鈥檓 asking every New Mexican to contact the offices of Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luj谩n, and Reps. Melanie Stansbury, Gabe Vasquez, and Teresa Leger Fern谩ndez. Tell them to reject any TSA privatization efforts and any move to cut or weaken our federal screening workforce 鈥� because our safety, our jobs, and our communities depend on it.
Gabriel R. Ochoa is the president AFGE Local 1050.
