The Biden administration has tasked federal air marshals with babysitting criminal noncitizens who have stolen into the country, even though neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the White House is willing to declare the border crisis an emergency.

This mandated work may appear even more intolerable for the highly trained agents since there is now cause to suspect that Islamic terrorists are once again scheming to attack American citizens.

An old foe with the same M.O.

Despite getting roundly whipped by American forces since the September 11 attacks, elements of al Qaeda have nevertheless managed to slither into the new year.

This week, al Qaeda affiliates claimed responsibility for two simultaneous attacks in southeastern Mali, reported Africanews. The Malian Ministry of Security and Civil Protection noted Tuesday that two firemen and three civilians were murdered in one of the attacks.

Al Qaeda also vowed in the latest issue of its magazine Ghazwa-e-Hind to demolish the Ram temple being built in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in order to replace it with a mosque.

The international jihadist group may also have new deadly designs closer to home.

Judicial Watch has obtained a document from high-level DHS sources indicating that "Al-Qaeda says upcoming attacks on US, possibly involving planes, will use new techniques and tactics."

Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, warned in September 2021 that it would take between one and two years for the terror organization, rebuilding in Afghanistan, to have "some capability to at least threaten the homeland."

Biden administration juggling crises it won't name

Such an attack may exploit the Biden administration's monthly assignment of 150-250 air marshals to the southern border to tackle "a surge in irregular migration" — a surge atop an already unprecedented wave of criminal noncitizens into the nation under President Joe Biden's watch.

Air marshals are normally tasked with securing the nation's transportation system and protecting the flying public under the supervision of the DHS' Transportation Security Administration.

Air Marshal National Council executive director Sonya LaBosco explained to Judicial Watch on Jan. 1 that the Biden administration now has tasked highly trained marshals with "making sandwiches for [illegal aliens] and driving them around like Uber or picking up supplies."

Fox News Digital reported that mid-2021, the Federal Air Marshal Service asked for volunteers to head down to the southern border for 30-day stints. However, in late October, the Biden administration made such tours to the border mandatory.

These mandatory deployments reportedly leave just one in 100 American flights protected by a marshal.

David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, told the Washington Examiner that normally, 8% of U.S. commercial flights typically have marshals keeping watch. The Federal Air Marshal Service has roughly 3,000 marshals in its employ.

The National Association of Police Organizations questioned the DHS' decision, stating, "We strongly question the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to divert much-needed aviation security to the southern border especially as we enter the busiest travel season of the year, particularly as a Federal emergency has not been declared at the border."

House Republicans criticized the DHS for the move, stating that "redirecting these Air Marshals away from their critical law enforcement functions in our nation’s skies, creating a massive risk to public safety."

The Air Marshal National Council similarly criticized the move, filing a formal complaint accusing Federal Air Marshal Service Director Tirrell Stevenson and TSA administrator David Pekoske "of fraud, waste, and abuse of authority and violations of federal law."

The council noted that the TSA administrator does not have "any authority to deploy TSA or FAM employees to the southern border to perform non-transportation-security-related matters."

The exception that still has not been met, said the complaint, is if an emergency has been declared by the DHS secretary, which has yet to take place.

Backlash

Londo, who has warned that marshals are growing increasingly willing to risk termination over the mandated border service, recently penned a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Stevenson, and Pekoske, once again expressing concern about the misuse of the marshals in light of the more pressing need to protect America from the Islamist threat.

Londo wrote, "As you are aware currently hundreds of Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) are deployed to the southern border to preform [sic] humanitarian work to include warming up sandwiches for migrants."

The council director previously characterized these mandated tasks as "non-law enforcement civilian humanitarian duties."

"We have been informed that these deployments are indefinite, in other words no end in sight for sending hundreds of FAMs to the southern border," he noted.

Citing the news of al Qaeda activity potentially targeting American aircraft, Londo underscored that "deploying FAMs to the southern border to perform humanitarian work is reckless and putting [our] Nation and the people we serve at extreme risk."

The council president noted that DHS Secretary Mayorkas had testified under oath before Congress that the border was secure and that the White House has not yet declared the crisis it facilitated at the border an emergency, intimating marshals were being wasted on a problem the Biden administration still refuses to properly acknowledge.

Londo concluded the letter by writing, "We have to ask how can you justify sending FAMs to the border in huge numbers, when the border is in your words secure, and there is no emergency? Yet we have major security incidents happening right now affecting our aviation security."

LaBosco, who signed both the letter and the complaint, told "Fox & Friends First," "We don't understand why these decisions are being made. The intel is clear. Al Qaeda is watching for our weak areas. Our aviation is a high-risk area. We're not protecting our aviation domain, and we're going to the border. It is absolutely madness."