This Boy’s TSA Patdown Has Enraged People All Over

A two minute long pat down of a young boy at a Texas airport has the internet fuming.

A mother posted a video of the TSA pat down and it has quickly went viral as it appeared very intrusive for a minor to go through.

The boy and his family were departing from Texas’ Fort Worth International Airport on March 26th and were heading to San DIego. After the boy’s laptop triggered the scanner, he was pulled aside for a pat-down.

Jennifer Williamson, the boy’s other, posted the entire video of his pat-down onto her Facebook. It has been watched more than 6 million times and shared more than 100,000 times.

The child was in shorts, a T-shirt, and barefoot, and according to his mother suffers from sensory processing disorder (SPD). She said he feels anxious when touched for too long so imagine how he felt being patted down for that long.

“We have been through hell this morning. They detained Aaron for well over an hour at DFW. (And deliberately kept us from our flight… we are now on an alternate) We were treated like dogs because I requested they attempt to screen him in other ways per TSA rules. He has SPD and I didn’t want my child given a pat down like this. Let me make something else crystal clear. He set off NO alarms. He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying ‘I don’t know what I did. What did I do?’ I am livid.”

A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) statement said two police officers were called to “mitigate the concerns of the mother”.

“I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying. We had two DFW police officers that were called and flanking him on each side.”

“Somehow these power tripping TSA agents who are traumatizing children and doing whatever they feel like without any cause, need to be reined in,” she continued.

The TSA also said, “TSA allows for a pat-down of a teenage passenger, and in this case, all approved procedures were followed to resolve an alarm of the passenger’s laptop. The video shows a male TSA officer explaining the procedure to the passenger, who fully cooperates. Afterward, the TSA officer was instructed by his supervisor, who was observing, to complete the final step of the screening process.”

Watch the video below of the pat down yourself and judge for yourself if this was too much or standard procedure. New TSA procedures took effect on March 2.