In a nearly 17-year career with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Officer Omar E. Palmer had encountered plenty of precarious situations, from suitcases filled with weapons and drugs to disorderly passengers in John F. Kennedy Airport’s international terminal, according to his longtime friend and significant other.
“I would often get calls, when he would get off work in the middle of the night — about what happened, or who he met, or a particular seize that happened,” said Yvette Williams. “Omar was fearless.”
Williams, living in Ohio where she teaches a college English course, began to feel fearful and helpless from afar. Palmer, who lived in New York with his aging mother, said long-term quarantining wasn’t possible, and he sent her selfies in personal protective equipment to ease her worries.
Williams’ gut feeling was right: Palmer contracted the virus at the airport, and died in early May after a monthlong stay in intensive care.
Palmer was among hundreds of federal personnel whose responsibilities were adjusted to include evaluating the health of passengers arriving from overseas. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Omar Palmer performed many assigned tasks with professionalism and integrity, his passing was tragic and we kindly ask that you respect his family’s privacy during this difficult time,” an agency spokesman at JFK said.
The goal of the screening program was to identify and isolate sick travelers who were bringing the virus into the country, in hopes that it would thwart any possible community spread.
In interviews with dozens of federal employees and task force officials over four months,media reports surfaced that the program proved not only ineffective but dangerous from its earliest days. One former official on the White House coronavirus task force estimated that that three- to four-dozen personnel were infected by the end of May. To compare, nine travelers out of hundreds of thousands screened in the program were detected to have been infected by the end of September.
Yet the White House chose not to dismantle it, in a bid to avoid worrying the public.
The White House, the National Security Council, the Department of Transportation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to requests for comment. The office of the vice president, who was appointed to lead the task force in February once the system was in place, declined to comment.