When a person goes to the airport they are required to go through a screening process to make sure that no one is bringing anything that could be potentially harmful or illegal onto the flight. The people in charge of carrying out this process are the Transportation Security Administration also known as TSA officers.

Recently Homeland Security issued a test to check the accuracy of the TSA process. The test consisted of officers from homeland security also known as “the red team” regularly posing as travelers entering the TSA check lines trying to smuggle in prohibited items such as weapons, drugs and explosives.

One of the facilities tested was the Minneapolis- St.Paul International Airport which is one of the nation’s busiest airports, and the results were alarming. They were unable to detect 95 percent of prohibited items. Out of the 18 times officials tried smuggling in contraband they were successful 17 times.

This is not the first time the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport was tested and fell short. In April of 2016 they failed to stop the contraband from entering nine out of the 12 times it was attempted.

The failure of this test forced the then TSA chief Melvin Carraway to resign from his position. Ha Nguyen McNeill took over for Carraway in June for the position of Chief of Staff.

Homeland Security is working alongside the TSA to try and find ways to improve the accuracy of the checks. One of the things they are changing is making sure that the officers in charge of screening bags rotate more often.