An Unpleasant Experience

Author's Note: This is by no means representative of my usual encounters with security at airports or at other public transportation terminals. On the whole, I have found security personnel to be attentive and thorough while remaining courteous and humane. Needless to say, this incident shocked me as much as it hurt me.

On Saturday night, my family headed to the Denver airport to catch our almost-midnight flight back home. Now my sister just turned 18, but she doesn't have a license or permit, just a state ID. On the way to Colorado, this ID (in combination with her birth certificate) worked just fine when we went through security. I guess Denver had a different standard.

They pulled her aside to a different security station, ran her and her bags through, frisked her, and then proceeded to search her bags by hand. The whole time she sat there, detained, with a scared look on her face, and I stood next to my parents across from her with my arms crossed, glaring at any TSA agent that passed me.

None of them bothered to explain what was going on when one of the machines went off unexpectedly, and they started sterilizing all their tools. No one helped her repack her bags or gave her more than brisk orders as the process went on. And one agent, who wasn't searching her, expressed his surprise that they didn't let her through with what should have been sufficient ID, accompanied by her legal parents who had proof of their parental relationship. (A.N.: And to be absolutely clear, my sister was carrying nothing illegal or malicious - the alarm was set off during the search by some lotion, mistakenly packed in her main bag rather than the approved Ziploc.)

I'm sorry - that doesn't make me feel safe. I was furious the whole time it was happening, and I cried in the terminal after we got through. Because only days after a wonderful week that made me feel like I actually had a stake in my country, I was terrified and helpless, unable to assure that (should she be mistaken for a terrorist or detained because of skin color or any other characteristic) justice would be done for my sister, a U.S. citizen, and a scared young girl.