TSA Forced Muslim Harvard Student To Show Bloodied Sanitary Pad: ACLU Complaint

Zainab Merchant, a Muslim student at Harvard University filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for being singled out numerous times at various U.S. airports and being subjected to rigorous search routines by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials.

The complaint, which was filed Aug. 14 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Merchant’s behalf, listed detailed accounts of at least 10 times when she had to endure excessive searches conducted by airport officials in the past two years, the most shocking being an instance from March 3, when she was forced to expose her blood-stained sanitary pad during a security pat-down at the Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts.

She was on her way from Boston to Washington, D.C., for a speaking engagement when the incident took place. After rummaging through her carry-on luggage and subjecting her to additional body screening, including her groin area, a female TSA officer at the airport checkpoint announced to the other agents present there that she needed to get a “deeper look.”

Even after telling the agent that she was on her period and hence was wearing a menstrual pad, the agent insisted on checking her underwear. Merchant was denied the request to have a lawyer present in the private room where she was led to for the screening by multiple officers.

After the experience of being forced to reveal her bloodied pad, Merchant asked the officers for their identification so that she could file a report. But the Harvard student claimed the officers gave her no names and walked away from the spot, covering their badges.

Often being subjected to “intrusive, humiliating searches — often in ways that appear duplicative and unnecessary — every time she has sought to board an airplane or reenter the United States,” Merchant, who lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband and three children, made it her mission to find out the reason she was being targeted.

However, even after writing to members of Congress and the DHS’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, developed by the department for people who have been repeatedly identified for additional screening and want to have erroneous information corrected in the department’s systems, her efforts were in vain.

ACLU’s complaint further referred to an instance when Merchant was contacted by a DHS officer in December 2017, who claimed he "would like to come up with a solution that could make everyone happy." However, when Merchant met with the officer, who identified himself as Agent Newcomb along with his partner, Agent Jerome, Merchant was subjected to a range of questions which verged on religious profiling.

“Agent Jerome questioned Ms. Merchant about whether she knew of anyone who had been "radicalized" and again indicated that they would like to come up with a mutually beneficial solution to her travel issues,” the complaint noted, after which Merchant refused to meet with the officers again.

Merchant strongly believed she was being targeted by the TSA and the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) because she frequently criticized the biased practices of these agencies on her website, Zainab Rights. However, the agencies were not allowed to do that since her opinions on her website were protected by the First Amendment as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), ACLU said in the complaint.

In addition, on a number of occasions, airport officials asked Merchant whether she was a Sunni or a Shia – which are different branches of Islam – and whether she had any affiliations with the Islamic State terrorist group, also called ISIS.

Despite a few of her own family members and friends having distanced themselves from her due to the content on her website, Merchant said she had no intention of backing down.

“I hope that they hear us loud and clear,” Merchant said. “I’m not going to stop fighting for my rights. This is affecting us on a daily basis now. I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to give up, no matter what happens. I just want them to give us answers as to why this is happening and what I can do to rectify it, because I haven’t done anything wrong. Just give us some answers.”

In a statement, the DHS told the Huffington Post regarding Merchant’s claim that she might be on the agency’s watch list: “The Department of Homeland Security can neither confirm nor deny whether someone is on a watch list or provide any information about an individual who may be on federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement sensitive information.”