[Infowarrior] - Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

[Richard Forno]

January 14, 2010
Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly”  
list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them  
from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500  
on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security  
screening.

At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of  
Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the  
price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the  
first time on the Bahamas trip.)

Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which  
includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the  
Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to  
the airlines.

A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, “there  
are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists,” but would not  
comment on Mikey’s situation specifically.

For every person on the lists, hundreds of others may get caught up  
simply because they share the same name; a quick scan through a  
national phone directory unearthed 1,600 Michael Hickses. Over the  
past three years, 81,793 frustrated travelers have formally asked that  
they be struck from the watch list through the Department of Homeland  
Security; more than 25,000 of their cases are still pending. Others  
have taken more drastic measures.

Mario Labbé, a frequent-flying Canadian record-company executive,  
started having problems at airports shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, with  
lengthy delays at checkpoints and mysterious questions about Japan. By  
2005, he stopped flying to the United States from Canada, instead  
meeting American clients in France. Then a forced rerouting to Miami  
in 2008 led to six hours of questions.

“What’s the name of your mother? Your father? When were you last in  
Japan?” Mr. Labbé recalled being asked. “Always the same questions in  
different order. And sometimes, it’s quite aggressive, not funny at  
all.”

Fed up, in the summer of 2008, he changed his name to François Mario  
Labbé. The problem vanished.

Several Web sites, including the T.S.A.’s own blog, are rife with  
tales of misidentification and strategies for solving them. Some  
travelers purposely misspell their own names when buying tickets,  
apparently enough to fool the system. Even the late Senator Edward M.  
Kennedy once found himself on a list.

“We can’t just throw a bunch of names on these lists and call it  
security,” said Representative William J. Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey  
Democrat. “If we can’t get an 8-year-old off the list, the whole list  
becomes suspect.”

Mr. Fotenos, the T.S.A. spokesman, promised improvements in a few  
months, as the agency’s Secure Flight Program takes full effect. Under  
the new system, airlines will collect every passenger’s birth date and  
gender, along with their names. The T.S.A. will cross-check all that  
with the watch lists. Previously, the airlines cross-checked the lists  
themselves, using only the names.

Certainly, Mikey’s date of birth, less than a month before 9/11,  
should prevent him from being mistaken as a terrorist.

A third grader at a parochial school in Clifton, N.J., Mikey recites  
the drill like the world-weary traveler he is. Leave early for the  
airport, always with his passport. Try to get a boarding pass at the  
counter. This will send up a flag. The ticket agent, peering down at  
tiny bespectacled Mikey, will apologize or roll her eyes, and call for  
a supervisor. The supervisor, after a phone call — or, more likely, a  
series of phone calls — will ultimately finagle him onto the plane.  
But the Hickses are typically the last to select seats and the last to  
board, which means they sometimes can’t sit together.

Mrs. Hicks, a photojournalist who herself got Secret Service clearance  
to travel aboard Air Force II with then-Vice President Al Gore,  
anticipated additional chaos following the attempted underwear  
bombing. Before leaving for the Bahamas on Jan. 2, she reached out to  
Congressman Pascrell’s office, which then enlisted a T.S.A. agent to  
meet the family at the airport. Even this did not prevent Mikey from  
an extra pat-down.

On the way home last Friday, Mikey’s boarding pass showed four giant  
red S’s at the airport in Nassau. “Oh, random screening,” Mrs. Hicks  
said. Mikey asked his mother not to worry and said he would use his  
tae kwon do — he has a junior black belt — if needed. Mrs. Hicks said  
she wanted to take pictures of her son being frisked but was told it  
was against the rules.

Mikey, who would rather talk about BMX bikes and his athletic trophies  
than airport security, remains perplexed about the “list” and the  
hurdles he must clear. “Why do they think a kid is a terrorist?” Mikey  
asked his mother at one point during the interview.

Mrs. Hicks said the family was amused by the mistake at first. But  
that amusement quickly turned to annoyance and anger. It should not  
take seven years to correct the problem, Mrs. Hicks said. She applied  
for redress in December when she first heard about the Department of  
Homeland Security’s program.

“I understand the need for security,” she added. “But this is  
ridiculous. It’s quite clear that he is 8 years old, and while he may  
have terroristic tendencies at home, he does not have those on a plane.”