Lacking what critics said was common sense and compassion, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers at the Wichita, Kansas, airport treated a 4-year-old child like a terrorist.

 

Isabella Brademeyer and her 6-year-old brother, Oliver, were in the Wichita airport while traveling back to Montana when they spotted their grandmother who was traveling separately to another destination. While the grandmother waited to be patted down by TSA screeners, the little girl ran over and hugged her.

 

TSA workers responded by ordering Isabella Brademeyer to sit down and undergo her own pat-down. The girl, who had recently been taught at preschool about “stranger danger,” began to cry. Her mother, Michelle Brademeyer, was prevented by the TSA officers from going to her daughter and consoling her until the pat-down was completed.

 

“I was prevented from coming any closer, explaining the situation to her, or consoling her in any way. … It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter,” Michelle Brademeyer told the Wichita Eagle.

 

The agency responded to the controversy by saying it was necessary for the child to undergo the screening after coming into physical contact with her grandmother who hadn’t been cleared yet by TSA officers. They added in an official statement: “TSA officers did not suspect or suggest the child was carrying a firearm.”

 

In December, TSA agents in Las Vegas were the subject of mockery after they confiscated a professor’s cupcake because it resembled a “gel-like substance” that violated federal safety rules and “it was in a container in which it conformed to the container’s shape.”

 

And in February TSA screeners at Dallas-Fort Worth airport were accused of singling out women with attractive figures to go through full-body scanners.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Mom: TSA Agents at Wichita Airport Treated Daughter, 4, Like a Terrorist (by Tim Potter, Wichita Eagle)

TSA Defends Pat-Down of 4-Year-Old at Kansas Airport (by Roxana Hegeman, Associated Press)

Dallas TSA Accused of Body-Scanning Women with Attractive Figures (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

TSA Defends Confiscating Professor’s Cupcake (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)