Video is generating outrage of airport security conducting a secondary screening of a baby while the parent holds them. The screener uses a handheld wand and gives the baby a pat down.
Airport staff receives backlash after being seen searching a baby. ✈️ pic.twitter.com/sb11GZCGmc
— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) December 12, 2025
This isn’t an airport in the U.S. It looks to me like Manchester in the U.K. But you’d see something similar here, too.
TSA says infants and small children may be carried through the metal detector, and if they alarm, they’ll receive additional screening. After backlash they modified procedures to reduce the likelihood of a pat down for children 12 and under, but they reserve the right to do it.
Generally reactions to the video break down as:
- Outrage: (“this is insane”)
- It’s been totally normalized: “stop whining” “There’s nothing wrong with this… no one knows what someone may be hiding…”
- Gallows humor: just enjoy the baby’s facial expression, looking like they’re judging everyone.
When TSA screeners hit a man in the groin during screening, they argued in court that he shouldn’t be allowed to sue. The agency has intentionally made pat downs more intimate, arging it’s not sexual assault when the government does it. So abuses continue unabated, like the invasive pat down given to a triple amputee purple heart veteran (surely he should have been a ‘trusted traveler’). And, of course, there was the six minute pat down of a 96-year old woman in a wheelchair.
TSA asked the near-centenarian to remove her windbreaker. It wasn’t easy but they did it! They patted her down, including her inner thighs. They made her adjust herself so they could reach underneath her. They felt around her stomach and her breasts. They had her lift her legs.
The truth is, with babies, it’s theoretically possible they could be used as a decoy in terrorism but this isn’t a real threat to aviation. The closest analog is a Boko Haram suicide bomber strapping a baby to her back to avoid suspicion in a crowded market. Terrorists have also planed bombs in baby carriages in Israel – but that’s not actually using the baby.
It’s much more common to use babies and baby supplies for smuggling. TSA did find bullets hidden inside a diaper at LaGuardia two years ago, and a gun inside a stroller last year. More often, though, it’s drugs being concealed in diapers.
Once you accept that TSA can search you, they need to search babies too or else adults will just hide everything on the baby. But the best security takes a risk-based approach, the threat from babies is more theoretical than real, and TSA shouldn’t be looking for drug smugglers because it’s a distraction from doing aviation security. The same lessons hold in Europe, too.
That baby could’ve been packin’ heat… -*full diaper*
They patted down Al Gore in 2002 – why not babies?
Just look at the response to COVID and the days of using common sense and logic have been replaced by hysteria, irrationality and virtue signaling.
The sad reality is that anything or anyone not carefully and obviously screened will be noted by terrorists and that weakness subsequently exploited.
@ffi — He was… super-cereal.
You know that baby video is AI right? It’s been around for a while
Which would involve focusing on swarthy-looking military-aged males, and that’s not gonna happen.
Another case of security missing the real threat (in the diaper).
The theater of the ignorant continues.
In test drills 5 % of firearms and fake but obvious looking bombs pass through TSA undetected.
@CHRIS I have an AI-generated video of a cat getting hold of and firing an AK-47 into a front door. It’s hysterical. I laugh my a$$ off every time I watch it.
The sad reality is that people looking to do harm don’t fight fair, they fight to win. They’ll weaponize anything…including a baby.
Look, many of us are Pre-check, Global Entry, Clear, Nexus, and so on. And, from time to time we have TSA agents patting us down and copping a feel. If we’re still a threat, so is that crying, snotty, poop-filled thing. LOL!
@Chris – it can’t be AI, there’s nothing stating so on the video. PLUS, it has the X “verified” blue checkmark, so it has to authentic – right?
It seems to me that I have seen movies where they use an innocent looking bystander, Grandma, young woman, child to hide the drugs, weapons, or whatever.
A little off topic, in the movie “Romancing the Stone” an innocent looking boy drove a car in Cartagena and kidnapped Joan Wilder’s sister in broad daylight.
On the topic of babies, but not airline searches (in other words, way off topic), does anyone remember the “stunt baby” episodes in Saturday night live? Basically, the couple has a baby, but when the guy goes nuts, they stop the filming and bring in the “stunt baby” who has a gruff tough sounding voice. Then guy throws the stunt baby around. It was awful edgy humor, but at the time, I could not stop laughing at it.