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Colombia, Burma, and other nations--have been denied entry because the terrorist groups
in their home countries extorted money from them.25

The Transportation Security Administration

Before 9/11, airport security in the United States was a private enterprise. It was handled
by companies under contract with government agencies that operated individual airports,
companies that owned airport terminals, or individual airlines operating their own
terminals. Security procedures were largely standardized, with metal detectors and other
measures common to all major airports and carriers. Passengers were required to submit
to searches of their persons and property as a condition of buying their tickets and
boarding their flights.
After the 9/11 hijackers succeeded in bringing weapons aboard four commercial
passenger jets, many critics of the decentralized American system charged that private
companies were not doing enough to protect the nation from the threat of airline
hijacking. They argued that because air travel constitutes interstate commerce and affects
national security, the federal government should control airport security.
On November 19, 2001, President Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security
Act, which authorized the Transportation Department to federalize airport security. The
department created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which oversees
security for highways, railways, mass transit, ports, and domestic airports. In 2003, the
TSA was placed under the new Homeland Security Department.
The TSA, which today employs more than 40,000 screeners, has been criticized by air
travelers and civil liberties groups alike. Many of the complaints have developed into
lawsuits concerning privacy issues, but they have been largely unsuccessful. While the
Fourth Amendment generally protects Americans from searches of their persons or
property without warrants, the courts have historically granted wider latitude to
government agents participating in a systematic law enforcement program designed to
prevent terrorism and other crimes.
In United States v. Skipwith (1973), the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans,
Louisiana, held that people preparing to board planes, "like those seeking entrance into
the country, are subject to a search based on mere or unsupported suspicion."26 Random
searches are allowed under certain circumstances, and law enforcement officials are given
the benefit of the doubt in identifying probable cause for any specific search in light of
their specialized training.27 Airport screening has additionally been found constitutional
because in most cases, passengers have the opportunity to refuse a search by refusing to
fly. Passengers imply their consent to be searched when they attempt to fly, and that
consent may not be revoked once passengers have presented themselves for boarding.28
Although security agents have broad authority to search passengers and profiling is
permitted, U.S. law does not permit race or ethnicity to be the sole basis of the profile that
triggers a search. Nonetheless, since its inception the TSA has been plagued by
accusations that its screeners single out passengers who appear to be of Arab descent or
Muslim faith.
In response, the TSA has implemented "racially neutral profiling," which targets passengers
who behave suspiciously, for instance by paying cash for airline tickets, buying one-way

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