Sonya LaBosco, director of the Air Marshal National Council, told Fox News that traveling has become unsafe due to strained air marshal resources as a result of the border crisis. LeBosco also revealed that a significant portion of the agency’s resources have been spent on tracking Trump supporters and anyone who flew to Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
“We’re not doing our regular missions where we’re out there looking for the bad guys. So, right now, on most flights, you’re not gonna have Air Marshals,” LaBosco said, adding that significant resources have been spent on following “January 2021 people.”
When asked to clarify, LaBosco revealed that the agency’s “primary mission” is following people who flew into the region in January 2021. “You did not have to go to the Capitol or the rally, and you’ve been put on a specific list that TSA now has assigned Air Marshals to follow these people who have not had any type of criminal investigation, they have not committed a crime, but yet three years later, we’re following the same individuals day in and day out.”
LaBosco stressed that “Operation Quiet Skies” does not simply track January 6 protesters or Save America rally attendees, but anyone who flew into the Capitol region in the days preceding the protests. “So if anybody was there for a job interview, to visit family. We even had one gentleman that was there for a funeral, they were put on this domestic terrorist list just because of their geographic location to Washington D.C.,” she said.
“So these people did not even commit a crime, they were not at the Capitol.”
When asked whether those on the list are aware of the surveillance, LaBosco stated that some of them do because they are forced to go through enhanced security before being tailed by teams of Air Marshals.
Those who traveled to the Washington D.C. region on January 6 have been subjected to additional blanket surveillance and monitoring whether they were at the Capitol or not. Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee revealed that Bank of America turned over transaction logs for anybody who was in the D.C. or Northern Virginia area on January 5 or 6 to the FBI.
This included tens of thousands of Americans who had nothing to do with the protests.