Sorry, ma’am, but your hair might contain explosives’: Now TSA agents demand to search woman’s afro
Last updated at 8:33 AM on 21st September 2011
- An airline passenger who had already been through airport security was left in tears after TSA officers insisted on checking her Afro-style hair in case she was concealing explosives.
Hairdresser Isis Brantley was stopped at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, after she had passed a scanning device.
As she travelled down an escalator, she claims she heard someone yell: ‘Hey you, hey you, ma’am, stop. Stop – the lady with the hair, you.’
‘Hiding place’: Hairdresser Isis Brantley was forced to undergo a humiliating pat down
Two TSA agents told her she could not go any further until they checked her hair for explosives, said Miss Brantley, of Dallas, Texas.
Reluctantly she allowed them to do it and the TSA staff patted her hair down right there instead of asking to return to a private area for screening.
‘And so she started patting my hair, and I was in tears at that point,’ Miss Brantley told NBC News. ‘And she was digging in my scalp.’
I was outraged,’ Brantley said. ‘I was humiliated. I was confused.’
After the pat-down, Brantley complained to a TSA supervisor at Hartsfield-Jackson who then apologized to her.
‘She said, “Ma’am, please, I promise you, I’m going to take care of it. I’m so sorry that happened to you,”‘ Miss Brantley said. ‘And I’m like, “OK, that’s weird.”‘