Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

LIZETTE ALVAREZ
New York Times
Thursday, January 14, 2009

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks,
introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent
traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he
shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a
myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when
he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to
Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name
“was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every
airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly
shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more
aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone
is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs.
Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they
don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through
security without being frisked.”

Full story here.