A union spokesperson for Transportation Security Administration employees predicts an “operational disaster during the summer travel season at airports” as the Trump administration diverts the agency’s funding and manpower to address the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jacque Simon, public policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, had nothing but bad things to say about a recently unveiled plan to move a few hundred TSA employees to the border, which also included the delay of TSA equipment purchases to help deal with thousands of illegal immigrants flooding in from Mexico every day.

Simon claimed in an interview with NPR that the “very troubling” plan will put Americans at risk, while likely infuriating summer travelers forced to wait in long lines.

“Moving over a few hundred employees is bad enough,” Simon told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Wednesday. “But the plan that we heard about yesterday is a lot more severe than that. They’re talking about reallocating, repurposing money that’s been appropriated to TSA for workers’ comp, for new equipment to detect explosives and weapons at area checkpoints.

“This is all very troubling,” Simon said. “But, of course, you know, the idea of diverting TSA officers from their very, very important role at the airport to the border is problematic by itself too.”

Inskeep attempted to offer the opposing view, that the border crisis outweighs inconveniences at the airport, but Simon was unsympathetic.

“I’m trying to think through from the vantage point of the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. They would be taking away money for new, advanced airport screening. That sounds bad,” Inskeep said. “But you can also imagine the logic where that’s equipment to be purchased in the future anyway, and there is a crisis now at the border.”

“Well, here’s the scenario we envision – very, very long lines at airports because they’ll have to close checkpoints,” Simon said. “They won’t have enough staff.”

It’s certainly a problem the Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan knows well.

McAleenan testified before Congress on Wednesday about the scope of the massive surge of illegal immigrants arriving at the border this year and urged lawmakers to approve additional funding and resources requested by the president.

“Given the scale of what we’re facing, we’ll exhaust our resources by the end of this fiscal year, which is why the administration sent a supplemental funding request to the Congress over three weeks ago,” McAleenan said.

The acting secretary laid out the specifics of the more than $3 billion request, which would go to creating and expanding migrant processing shelters and detention facilities, increased personnel expenses, transportation and detention costs.

“The supplemental request is critical, but unless Congress addresses the pull factors, namely our vulnerable legal framework for immigration, children will continue to be put at risk during a dangerous journey to our border,” he said.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” McAleenan said. “This is the third time I’ve been in a leadership role during a migration surge at the border … both in 2014 and 2016, at the end of the last administration.

“We have more than doubled those two crisis combined in the first seven months of this year, and we’re still in the middle of that effort.”