Twice-Deported Illegal Immigrant Accused of Rushing United Cockpit and Claiming a Bomb

A man accused of claiming to have a bomb and trying to force his way into the cockpit of a United Airlines flight to New Orleans is an illegal immigrant who had been deported twice, the Department of Homeland Security says.

Fox News reported that DHS identified the suspect as Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto, a Honduran national, and confirmed his two prior deportations. Just the News reported that he is accused of claiming to have a bomb during the flight, prompting the pilots to issue a reported hijacking alert, and of trying to enter the cockpit.

The flight left Newark on Monday bound for New Orleans. ABC News reported that the man was arrested after the plane landed. The Washington Examiner reported that Gomez-Alberto, 34, was arrested after he allegedly tried to storm the cockpit midflight late Monday, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged a detainer for him. A detainer asks the jail holding him to hand him over to federal immigration officers rather than release him.

No one was reported hurt. Passengers and crew deserve credit for keeping calm in what must have been a terrifying few minutes at 30,000 feet.

The bigger question is how he was here at all. Immigration officials said he had been arrested and deported twice before: first in September 2011 near El Indio, Texas, and again in October 2014 in Columbus, New Mexico, the New York Post reported. The Post also reported that he had previously been picked up by ICE but was released by a judge. Newsweek reported on his background as investigators pieced together how he came to be on the flight.

Returning to the United States after being deported is a federal crime. Doing it twice should have put a person on every list that matters. Instead, this man was able to buy a ticket, pass through airport screening and board a commercial jet full of American families.

Several questions now need answers. Why was he released after an earlier ICE arrest? How did a twice-deported man clear the screening that ordinary travelers go through every day? And what is being done to make sure people with removal orders are actually removed and stay removed?

Border security is not an abstract argument about numbers on a chart. It is about who is sitting next to your children on an airplane. Every deportation that does not stick, and every release that should not have happened, is a risk passed along to ordinary Americans. Congress and the administration owe travelers a full accounting of how this case slipped through, and a fix so it does not happen again.