Let’s keep politics out of your summer vacation

Steve Brody is flying out of Newark this week, and he’s worried. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is drawing up plans to pull U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers out of airports in cities the administration considers sanctuary jurisdictions. Newark Liberty International is first in line. Mullin wants to send those officers to a Newark detention center, where protesters have been camped out for days.

Brody, a retired government worker from Arlington, Va., is flying nonstop to Vancouver, Canada, but he’ll have to pass through U.S. Customs on his return flight. 

“Gimme strength,” he says. 

He’s not being dramatic. Customs officers are the people who let you back into the country. Pull them out, and international flights can’t unload passengers. The result will be chaos.

And that’s the part that should bother everyone, left, right and undecided. A passport doesn’t have a party affiliation. When a flight gets canceled, the system doesn’t check your voter registration before it strands you. You’re stuck.

Travel should be off limits to political maneuvering

The target list doesn’t stop in New Jersey. The administration’s sanctuary roster includes Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco — some of the largest airports in the country. Mullin has since said he’d focus on cities such as Newark first, which is a small comfort to the rest of America with summer vacation plans.

I’ve covered travel for almost three decades, and I’ve watched the government politicize everything from fees to airport security. But I’ve never seen the federal government threaten to brick an airport to win an argument.

Travel infrastructure should never be used as a political bargaining chip. Not by this administration, not by the next one, not ever.

Our transportation system isn’t a weapon for the executive branch to swing at politicians. There are better ways to do that. Messing around with people’s summer vacations is the fastest way to lose a midterm election.

A self-inflicted wound, visible from space

Then there’s the timing. The first World Cup game starts at MetLife Stadium in just a few weeks, a short drive from Newark, with hundreds of thousands of international fans flying into the region. Removing customs agents right as massive numbers of fans show up for the biggest sporting event on the planet would be a spectacular self-inflicted wound.

It’s also bad business, and the administration’s own people know it. Travel industry groups have lined up against the plan, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has reportedly pushed back on disrupting aviation infrastructure over a local law enforcement dispute.

The U.S. Travel Association warns the economic damage would be immediate and painful. It estimates a Newark shutdown would cost $8 billion in annual international visitor spending and put nearly 50,000 American jobs at risk. The group adds that Newark’s customs operations clear more than $30 billion in imported goods each year, so a stoppage would ripple out to shipping costs and store prices.

We almost did the smart thing

Here’s what should frustrate you the most if you’re traveling somewhere this summer. Congress already knows how to keep politics out of travel. It just keeps neglecting to finish the job.

During the long shutdown that left TSA employees working without pay, lawmakers introduced bill after bill to wall off aviation workers from the budget brawls, including the Keep America Flying Act and the Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The instinct was right. Security screeners and customs officers are essential to air travel. Without them, the system will sputter to a halt.

That’s the lesson Newark should finally teach us. Air travel is infrastructure, not leverage. You don’t shut off the water main to win a zoning dispute. And you don’t pull customs officers out of the terminal to make a point about a detention center.

How to protect your summer trip

In the meantime, you’ll need to take precautions if you’re flying somewhere this summer. Route around the hot zones if you can, but check your specific itinerary, because most of the obvious alternatives are also on the list. 

Buy travel insurance before you go, not after, and read the fine print. A standard policy may treat a staffing pullout as an administrative action rather than a covered disruption, which means a denied claim. A “cancel for any reason” policy gives you the most latitude, but you have to buy it early, and it costs more than standard insurance. And pay with a credit card, so the Fair Credit Billing Act has your back if a canceled flight never gets refunded.

But the real fix is bigger than any one traveler. Congress should pass a clean, permanent law that puts customs and air travel off-limits in political fights, full stop. Take the airports off the table.

Keeping politics out of your summer vacation should be common sense. Newark Airport belongs to the traveling public. If Washington wants to fight over immigration, it can do it on the floor of Congress—not in the airport terminal.