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TSA Wait Time Hits More Than Three Hours in Houston, Line Extending Outside; Trump Administration Deploys ICE Agents to Airports Amid TSA Shortages; Cuba Plunged Into Second Nationwide Blackout in Less Than a Week; Columbus Status Installed on White House Grounds; SoCal Sheriff Running for California Governor Seizes 2025 Election Ballots; Savannah Guthrie's New Plea for Help Finding Missing Mom. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired March 23, 2026 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[13:33:41]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We're continuing to follow Breaking News on the gridlock and long lines at many of the nation's airports. Travelers are barely moving at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. We're talking wait times of more than three hours or longer.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": CNN's Ed Lavandera is following all of this for us. All right, Ed. You're there in Houston. What's it like?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's an absolute brutal travel day for thousands of people trying to make their way through George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Let me give you the sign -- look at the sign here. We are in Terminal E. That's 200 minutes, believe it or not, that's actually good news. That number earlier, about an hour-and-a-half ago, was 260 minutes. But this line goes -- the checkpoints are over here. It comes all the way back through the terminal here, down an escalator, winding its way around several more times into like the subway area that connects the various terminals here.

This is one of two of eight security checkpoints that is open. Everything else has been closed. I can take you in here, past the sign here to give you a sense of just how much more waiting these passengers have to do. The line here continues to wind its way back and forth before they're able to get through the security checkpoints. We have seen close to a two dozen federal agents around various terminals that have been able to get through today. It's not exactly clear to me what they're doing.

[13:35:00]

They've been kind of standing around the edges, clearly, not involved in helping process the thousands of passengers trying to make their way through here. So it's not exactly clear how they're helping, how they're alleviating the pressure that this airport is under. According to the TSA, yesterday, about 39 percent of TS employees called out.

We're not sure of the numbers for today, but we will get that tomorrow. But clearly, this airport severely impacted. We've been talking to people, Brianna and Boris, who have been waiting in line for hours and hours knowing fully well that they are going to miss their flight. But they wanted to get on the other side of security and they will wait on that side until they can be rebooked on their next flight. Boris and Brianna?

KEILAR: Wow, that is a long time. But I guess, it is better than 260 minutes, which is just outrageous. Ed Lavandera, thank you so much. Live for us from Houston. Let's talk more about this now with John Pistole. He's a former TSA Administrator and former FBI Deputy Director.

John, thank you so much for being with us. We're seeing these ICE agents at these airports around the country. What assistance can they provide? Which of their skills do you see as possibly transferable to mitigating this overcapacity of security lines at the airport?

JOHN PISTOLE, FORMER TSA ADMINISTRATOR: Well, thanks, Brianna. Yeah, the ICE officers, agents are not qualified to be TSA screeners because they haven't gone through the training and the protocols of how do you do something that, for example, something alarms on a person or if they're not familiar with the computer tomography software and the machines and everything. So really, they can help at the, for example, the exit lanes out of the 425 plus airports that TSA provides security in.

There are a number of those -- majority of those that have TSA officers who are at the exit lanes where people are getting out of secure area. And so, that's not a security check for the passengers. They can help with the queue management, the line management, and hopefully, they could be a visible deterrent to a potential terrorist who may want to go in and make a name for themselves by shooting up or doing something terrible with the passenger line.

With all the press coverage, now, it's an opportunity. Oh, and by the way, we're at war with Iran and there may be somebody who's inspired to do something bad because of that war. They've had relatives killed in Lebanon as one individual last week did in a shootout. So just a number of issues to look at.

KEILAR: Well, that's actually one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because as we're watching, as we're watching them and we are showing video of them at various airports, they're generally walking around. I guess you could say they're sort of patrolling.

They are armed, and you and others have raised this concern that when you have so many people outside of the secure area, it is essentially just this soft target, right, that is so vulnerable. Having those ICE agents there, is that something that does give you pause that they are there as a deterrent?

PISTOLE: Well, hopefully it's a force multiplier for the outstanding work that the airport police do in all the major airports and a number of the smaller midsize airports. So each airport has, of any size, has their own airport police who do just that.

The challenge is, they are stretched thin right now to try to do anything. Forget if there's a crime on airport property or anything like that, but just in terms of crowd management and as a visible deterrent, which these ICE officers, the agents might serve as that in that role. So if that happens, that's a good thing.

There's just so many unknowns. And by the way, with all the call outs, the TSA officers who are calling out because they haven't been paid for a month nearly, that just exacerbates the problem of, are there soft targets that somebody is trying to exploit because they see it as a vulnerability now, or worse, there is a potential terrorist who actually thinks they can get through a security checkpoint like Abdulmutallab back on Christmas Day 2009 or Richard Reid in December of '01 with the shoe bomb or the underwear bomb with non-metallic improvised explosive device.

So there's just a number of issues that, unfortunately, for the traveling public and for TSA officers, could be solved if Congress do their job, the administration do the job collectively, because that's what it comes down to. There's compromise involved. In my 31 years in the government, it always involves compromise. Nobody gets everything they want. And so let's get back to work, ladies and gentlemen, and get some things resolved here.

[13:40:00]

KEILAR: Yeah, it's such an important thing to keep Americans safe as they are traveling. John Pistole, thank you so much for being with us.

The energy crisis in Cuba growing more dire, but there is hope for Cubans who want to see change on the island. Ahead, the story of one woman detained in Cuba and the family here in the U.S. who wants to see her freed.

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SANCHEZ: Cuba is now working to restore power after another island- wide blackout left more than 10 million people in the dark.

[13:45:00]

The Ministry of Energy says the priority right now is to restore power to vital services like hospitals, water supply, and food distribution. Cuba is still recovering from a power grid collapse that occurred early last week.

The latest blackout comes as the Trump administration ramps up political and economic pressure on Cuba. Remember, the U.S. began blocking fuel supplies from Venezuela to the island earlier this year, and that pressure has prompted new talks between Cuba's government and the Trump administration.

For the families of political prisoners detained in Cuba, the latest news of talks between Havana and Washington has sparked something they have not felt in years, hope. But the family of one Miami school teacher, held in Cuba for nine years, fears that she is running out of time.

Alina Lopez Miyares fled Cuba as a child. She became a U.S. citizen, earned a doctorate, and devoted her career to teaching chronically ill children who can't attend school. She later married an old flame. A Cuban diplomat, who Lopez's family says she later learned was a spy. One that manipulated her into traveling to the island to visit him after Cuban officials say she passed secret intelligence he had collected to the FBI.

In January of 2017, Lopez flew to Havana and never came back. A military court tried her for espionage and sentenced her to 13 years. After reviewing her case, the United Nations ruled her detention arbitrary in 2022, saying her rights were violated and calling for her immediate release.

Havana initially ignored it, but moved her into house arrest five years after her conviction, still not allowing Lopez to leave the island. Then, in late 2023, after the FBI arrested another Cuban spy in Miami, Lopez's family says Cuba secretly took her back into custody to an undisclosed location, and to this day, her family says they still have no idea where she is being held.

Her attorney in the U.S. tells me that she has two potentially serious health conditions that may require surgery, but given her situation and deteriorating conditions there, she is reluctant to undergo treatment on the island.

A source at the State Department recently told me that the Trump administration has brought up her case with Cuban authorities, advocating for her release on humanitarian grounds. I also spoke with her son, Michael Peralta, about the effort to bring her home. Here is part of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I understand that you are rarely able to communicate directly with your mom, and it's almost exclusively via text message. So I wonder, what is the last that she shared with you about how she's doing and about her health?

MICHAEL PERALTA, SON OF AMERICAN CITIZEN HELD IN CUBA: Thank you for asking, and thank you for having me, Boris.

Last she shared with me is that things are difficult right now in Cuba. There are several power outages, but she's desperate to come home. And she just keeps praying every day that she'll be back home and close to us here in Florida, back in the United States sometime soon.

SANCHEZ: You shared with me that she's facing significant health challenges. Has she told you that her conditions are being looked after, given how she's being detained?

PERALTA: Fortunately, she has mentioned that there have been regular checkups. However, she has issues that may need surgery. She is just hoping to hold out until she returns to the United States to have those surgeries.

SANCHEZ: What has it meant for your family to not have her there?

PERALTA: I'm not even sure I can put that into words, Boris. My grandmother, while she was still alive, for several years, in her late 80s and early 90s, was visiting my mother once a month by herself, taking her food and medicine.

I'm pretty sure that there was more rapid deterioration for her due to the stress and how emotionally distraught she was, same for my grandfather. It seems like his -- like he aged a lot faster than one would have expected, the way he carried himself and the way he lived his life.

I personally moved from California, which is where I was living at the time, back to Florida to help care for my grandmother. And at this point, there's just a lot of emotional and mental strain at this point on the entire family.

SANCHEZ: In court documents, going back to 2017, the Cuban government accused her of treason, claiming that she was a spy who was helping the FBI. And to be clear, the U.N. found that her rights were violated during her prosecution.

[13:50:00]

I do wonder what your response is to the claims coming from Havana.

PERALTA: All I can say is that my mother maintains that she is not a criminal. She denies the charges that were levied against her and also that there may -- it made no sense for her to be tried in a military tribunal. That makes no sense for a civilian to be tried in military tribunal. As far as I know, the Cuban government had it out and wanted to ruin somebody's life.

There have been subtle hints that have been made by my mother that the Cubans want something in return for her. So it seems to me that they may be wanting to use her as some sort of pawn, but I don't have much information outside of that.

SANCHEZ: A source at the State Department told me that the Trump administration recently raised her case with Cuban officials, advocating for her release on humanitarian grounds. What's your reaction to that?

PERALTA: Well, I really hope that there's some progress that's made. I've been in communication with the State Department and up until now, there's been a lot of requests made of the Cuban government for her release and no response from the Cuban government, which seems to not be progressing. But with this raised attention, I really hope that something comes out of it and you know, I pray them, my mother is back with us. It's been far too long. She hasn't even able -- she wasn't able to witness the burial of her either of her parents.

SANCHEZ: If these recently confirmed talks between the U.S. and Cuba don't result in the release of prisoners like your mother, would you consider these talks a failure?

PERALTA: Absolutely. Look, I understand that there are many situations around the world right now and I feel for those people, even the people in Cuba who have been wrongfully imprisoned. But I do believe that our government's first responsibility is to its citizens and we've seen Americans brought home from other countries. All I'm asking for is that same attention for my mother. She deserves to come home after nine years.

SANCHEZ: If you could speak to your mom today, Michael, what would you say?

PERALTA: I love you. I miss you and it's time for you to come home and be back close to your family.

SANCHEZ: Michael Peralta, thank you so much for the time. We appreciate you coming on and sharing your mother, Alina's story.

PERALTA: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: We reached out to the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. for comment on three separate occasions. They did not respond. Prisoners Defenders, an independent non-profit that tracks political prisoners around the world, estimates that Cuba is currently holding more than 1,200 political prisoners behind bars, though exactly how many are American citizens remains unclear. Citing sensitivity and privacy issues, the State Department would not disclose a full list.

Still to come this afternoon, his legacy may be controversial, but now a statue of Christopher Columbus is standing on the White House grounds. We'll discuss next.

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[13:58:13]

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour.

A 13-foot statue of Christopher Columbus is now standing near the White House after it was quietly installed in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office building over the weekend. The controversial statue is a direct replica of the one that was knocked down and tossed into Baltimore's harbor during social justice protests back in 2020. Today, the White House called Columbus an "original American hero" in a statement.

Also, a Southern California sheriff running for governor has seized more than half a million ballots from a special election on redistricting. The Associated Press reports that Riverside County Sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Chad Bianco, says he's investigating a ballot count discrepancy. Last November, California voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to redraw congressional district lines to favor Democrats in the upcoming midterm election. County election officials dispute Bianco's claims of a potential count discrepancy. Bianco says he is simply responding to a complaint from a local citizens group and denies his investigation has anything to do with his campaign.

SANCHEZ: And Savannah Guthrie is making another public plea to help find her missing mother, Nancy Guthrie. The family is asking the Arizona community to put renewed attention on the case by examining their camera footage, journal notes, text messages, and any other details that could potentially help investigators. Guthrie posted the family's statement to her Instagram account Sunday that also said, "No detail is too small. It may be the key."

The search for the 84-year-old is now in its eighth week. The family is offering $1 million reward for information leading to her recovery.

A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

KEILAR: Just minutes from now, LaGuardia Airport --