GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

The commercial airspace over El Paso, Texas was temporarily shut down early this morning.

The FAA,citing unspecified security concerns, initially said all flights would be halted for 10 days.

AMNA NAWAZ: But just a short time later, the FAA reversed course and reopened the airspace, saying only that the closure was done out of an abundance of caution.

The explanations offered by the Trump administration have led to many questions and tough criticism about how it was handled.

William Brangham has more on this chaotic, confusing turn of events.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's right, Amna.

After the FAA announced the reopening, an official with the Trump administration blamed the issue on Mexican drug cartels, alleging they'd sent drones near the airport that had to be dealt with.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy stood by that assertion later today.

But multiple news organizations reported that the closure was in fact triggered by a Pentagon trying out a new anti-drone defense system without giving aviation officials enough time to assess its danger to commercial flights.

On the ground in El Paso, though, the city's mayor, Renard Johnson, decried the confusion and lack of communication.

RENARD JOHNSON, Mayor of El Paso, Texas: I want to be very, very clear that 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.

That failure to communicate is unacceptable.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, for more on the many questions around this, we are joined again by Juliette Kayyem.

She's the faculty director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Homeland Security Project and was an assistant DHS secretary during the Obama administration.

Juliette, welcome back.

Just let's go through this ticktock one more time.

The FAA says we're going to close the airport for 10 days, then reverses it.

The administration says this was Mexican cartel drones, but others report that this was likely a Pentagon test that spooked those officials.

Meanwhile, locals on the ground are saying, what on earth is going on?

What are we to make of all of this?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, Former U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary: Right.

It's not good, just from a communication standpoint, because we're talking about commercial aviation space, passengers in the air, and a lack of coordination and confusion, at best.

So, basically, the notice goes out by the FAA last night.

People like me see it and go -- I cannot describe how unique this is.

No notice just comes out of nowhere, and it's a 10-day no flight.

So just to give comparison, when we bombed in Venezuela, that was a one-day no flight, so just to give you a comparison.

So no one knows what's coming.

There's silence.

Then there's a false story -- that's the best way of putting it -- about Mexican cartels and drones.

To give your audience a perspective, according to NORAD, the military division, thousands of drone excursions happen between Mexico and us monthly.

So there's nothing new about sort of a drone excursion.

We then get to I think the explanation that makes a lot of sense, which is -- or at least makes -- is understandable.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, which is the Pentagon has been trying out what's called high-energy laser technology.

You just envision very powerful electricity that has come through a laser.

The public does not know exactly the capacity of this technology, but it's suspected that it could probably bring down a commercial airplane.

They're testing it out at Fort Bliss nearby.

And perhaps they tested it out prematurely.

The FAA gets nervous, says we don't know what's going on in the sky and makes a sweeping judgment.

So everything we heard from the administration was essentially not accurate.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So is the FAA,in your view, in the right here?

Because if they suddenly felt that there was the potential for these high-electricity lasers shooting through the airspace where commercial flights might be going, maybe they were right to ground this and that they were kind of caught off guard here.

JULIETTE KAYYEM: Yes.

I think that's right.

I think the Defense Department, if they utilized this technology without notice to the FAA earlier this week, where there's some reporting that that is true, it's -- I don't use the word outrageous, but you don't mess around with commercial aviation space.

We saw what happened in January of 2025 when the airline regional jet and Black Hawk helicopter crashed; 67 people died.

There were new security rules put in place.

Those got unwound recently.

And there's been a little bit of a fight between DOD and the FAA about communication and clarity.

It's a fight that needs to get resolved.

The FAA, stuck with this new technology near a major -- a major airport near the Mexican border, basically made the sweeping decision.

They should have told the White House.

They should have told the Department of Defense.

But from our -- from all reporting, they just simply didn't know what the Defense Department's plans were in terms of use or testing.

And, as I said earlier, you don't mess around with commercial aviation space.

Maybe the FAA did this to get people's attention, which they did.

It's the Pentagon's responsibility to make sure they do not use technology that in any way puts at risk commercial aviation.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Right.

I think we could certainly all agree on that.

Again, on what the FAA did vis-a-vis the local officials, Representative Escobar, who represents El Paso, said she'd heard nothing officially about this.

The mayor, we heard, said nobody gave them a heads-up.

They had to divert emergency hospital flights to a city 45 minutes away.

Isn't there a protocol for the FAA to alert local officials to do this?

JULIETTE KAYYEM: Yes, and the airlines.

I mean, the airlines literally were caught sort of having to divert.

We heard from the mayor that there were medical aviation that were coming in that had to be diverted, so people's health care was put at risk.

There is a whole protocol.

Every airport -- I was part of this.

Every airport has local, state, federal, every federal alphabet soup, the private sector, the airlines, all who meet every morning and discuss what is going on.

So, as I said, the FAA, their hands aren't clean here.

They probably made the right decision, but they should have notified the localities and the airlines before this happened.

The protocols are in fact there.

And it's part of this idea, I think, coming, that there's like no homeland for this administration, that the federal agencies work without -- or do things without coordination with state, locals, governors and mayors, or Mexico.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Juliette Kayyem, thanks for helping us wade through a very confusing day.

Appreciate it.

JULIETTE KAYYEM: Yes, thank you.