EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — Questions about a sudden airspace closure over El Paso on Wednesday drew reactions from both President Donald Trump and Rep. Tony Gonzales, who said the disruption should not happen again and called for a clearer process among federal agencies.
Trump responded to a question about the airspace closure by saying, “People learn.”
President Donald Trump said “people learn” in reaction to a question about this week’s airspace closure over El Paso, TX. (credit: CNN){ }
Gonzales spoke about the El Paso airspace closure on Wednesday, saying he and others “woke up to this in a little bit of a state of what is happening.”
Gonzales said he received a message at 1 a.m. that the airspace closure was happening. He noted he represents a district that is “two-thirds of the Texas-Mexico border,” and said a similar situation happened “a couple months ago in Hudspeth County,” when he got a message that airspace was going to be closed “for a long period of time.”
He said the uncertainty surrounding the closure affected more than travel plans.
This impacts our economy, this impacts just, people are anxious. They don’t know what’s happening. There’s a lot of unknown,” Gonzales said. “And when you have a lot of unknowns, nothing good comes from that.
Gonzales said he worked with “various different agencies” and was at the White House on Wednesday, where he spoke with “various different secretaries” and other agencies about what was happening.
“The bottom line is, this needs to get better,” he said. Gonzales called for “a more streamlined process, a more transparent process,” and said local municipalities should be included.
Gonzales said his first call after learning about the closure was to the military to ask what was going on and whether people were safe. He said the closure was unexpected and “wasn’t planned.”
“A lot of lessons learned from it,” he said. “The number one lesson learned from it is this should not happen again. We should not wake up on a Wednesday morning with our airport being closed, not knowing how long it’s going to be closed.”
“That is unacceptable,” Gonzales said, adding, “I think we’re going to work towards we, the federal government is going to work towards fixing that.”
The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the airspace closure in El Paso after several hours.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the airspace closure was due to a “cartel drone” breach.
The Pentagon released the following statement:
Mexican cartel drones breached US airspace. The Department of War took action to disable the drones. The FAA and DOW have determined there is no threat to commercial travel.
RELATED: FAA lifts El Paso airspace closure after cartel drone breach, federal officials say
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