'Insane': Texts reveal El Paso airport's shock over FAA closure

Source: Politico

03/04/2026 02:00 PM EST


On the night of Feb. 10, the operations manager at El Paso International Airport had urgent news. The Trump administration was imposing a 10-day airspace closure over the Texas border city, and a federal transportation security official didn’t have any information about it, Alexander Rao texted colleagues around 9:50 p.m.

“[S]o far this is no BS,” Rao said in a message obtained by POLITICO via a public records request.

Shawn K. Naegele, security manager at the city-run airport, began hunting for answers.

“Anyone else to call?” Naegele asked.

“FBI?” Rao replied.

“It’s going to be a long night,” said aviation director J. Antonio “Tony” Nevarez.

This group text, among a trove of other city communications obtained by POLITICO under Texas’ open records law, provides a behind-the-scenes look into the chaos prompted by the Federal Aviation Administration’s temporary flight prohibition, an episode that offered fresh evidence of coordination problems between the air safety agency and the military. It also shows how the FAA, in the early hours of the incident, left the airport in the dark about what triggered the sweeping ban.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/04/el-paso-airport-closure-texts-00808688