The mobile passport lane
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The mobile passport lane is the smart-phone immigration channel through which John Kiriakou re-entered the United States from Spain in early November 2025, during what had become at midnight the night before the longest federal government shutdown in American history. He offered the trip as first-hand corroboration of an official warning he had been asked to assess.

The warning he was asked about

The transportation secretary had said that a continued shutdown would force the closure of swaths of American airspace, citing a shortfall of three thousand air traffic controllers and describing chaos already under way at large airports. The host put the obvious question: was he bluffing to pressure the Democrats? Kiriakou's answer was that he was not. "No. I think he's being serious."

His evidence was his own arrival. "I flew in from Spain a couple of days ago, Sunday, and the lines getting through security were ridiculous. I passed them as I was leaving, but there just weren't enough TSA people processing travelers through security."

The other line

Immigration was the opposite experience, and Kiriakou attributes the difference to a piece of software rather than to staffing. "When I was coming in through immigration, I filled out, it's called MPC, the mobile whatever, whatever." He recommends it without reservation: "I don't know why everybody doesn't do that, because there's never a line. You just blow right through."

What he found notable was the officer at the end of it. "So the immigration guy is just sitting like this, and he goes: 'Look at the camera. Welcome home.' And I just walk past and I'm in. That's it."

The explanation he gives

Kiriakou does not read the brevity as efficiency. He reads it as a federal workforce that has stopped performing effort it is not being compensated for: "It's because he's not getting paid. So he doesn't give a damn."

The observation belongs to a larger point he was making about the shutdown, that the country was not broke and had simply chosen not to spend. "It's not even like we're broke," he said, before landing on the formulation he repeated: "We got the money. We just don't want to use it." The immigration officer's four words are, in his account, what that decision looks like at the level of one desk in one arrivals hall.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- The National Guard in Washington
