Kristi Noem Walks Away From Briefing After Question About CBP Balloon Shooting and Airport Shutdown
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem abruptly cut short a press conference in Arizona on Friday after being pressed about reports that federal officials temporarily closed airspace over El Paso when border agents allegedly shot down a party balloon they believed was a cartel surveillance drone.
The incident reportedly occurred earlier this week, when authorities restricted airspace amid concerns about a suspected drone. Subsequent reports suggested the object may have been a balloon rather than a criminal device.
During the event in Phoenix, a reporter asked Noem whether the accounts were accurate and questioned why border officials appeared not to have coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration before taking action.
Noem responded that the situation involved a “joint agency task force mission” and said officials were continuing to work on interagency communication. She added that the department appreciated the partnership of the Department of War and the FAA moving forward.
Shortly after making the statement, Noem stepped away from the microphone, ending the press conference without taking additional questions.
Following the abrupt airspace closure and reopening, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA and Defense Department had “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.”
“The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region,” he wrote on X, in a post that is still public.
However, reporting suggests that the incident occurred when officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with military officials present, used a new Defense Department anti-drone energy weapon this week on a flying object that in fact appeared to be a party balloon, The New York Times reported.
The FAA, which hadn’t been briefed on the technology, shut down the El Paso airspace out of safety concerns, according to the paper.
The apparent inter-agency confusion alarmed elected leaders.
“The information coming from the administration does not add up,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, said after the incident in a press conference.
“This should have never happened. You cannot restrict airspace over a major city without coordinating with the city, the airport, the hospitals, the community leadership,” El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson told reporters after the closure. “This was a major and unnecessary disruption, one that has not occurred since 9/11.”
The closure comes at a sensitive time for both Noem and the U.S. transit system.
Noem’s agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is under heavy scrutiny after agents carrying out the administration’s military-style crackdown on illegal immigration shot and killed two Americans last month during their deployment in the Minneapolis area.
A recent Wall Street Journal exposé, meanwhile, alleges that Noem’s department has been in a state of internal “chaos,” with the secretary chasing made-for-TV moments dressing up in agency-branded flak jackets while carrying on an alleged extramarital affair with a deputy, which they both strongly deny.
There have been multiple high-profile incidents in U.S. airspace under the Trump administration, including a crash last January near Reagan airport in Washington, D.C., between a civilian airliner and a military helicopter, which killed 67 people.
