A father and daughter duo were traveling together on an American Airlines flight last week, and the father was accused of human trafficking. Is this a case of “better safe than sorry,” or does this cross the line?
American flight met by police over human trafficking claim
As reported by King 5 News and flagged by PYOK, a man named Francisco De Jesus had quite a flight last week on American Airlines, from Seattle (SEA) to Charlotte (CLT). The man was traveling with his 13-year-old daughter, as they were going to celebrate his oldest daughter’s graduation.
During the flight, the man got up to use the lavatory. According to De Jesus, when he returned to his seat, he noticed that his daughter had been given some wings. He asked his daughter where she got them from, and she explained they were given to her by a flight attendant.
A flight attendant had reportedly come to her to seat to ask if she was okay, where she was going, and who she was meeting. The father didn’t think much of the interaction at the time, and thought the two exhibited normal behavior, as the daughter had a cell phone, and the two watched movies together.
However, things changed once the plane arrived in Charlotte. As the duo were deplaning, they were stopped by several people, including one person who introduced himself as the head of security for the airport.
The father and daughter were escorted through the terminal, and were then eventually told that a flight attendant had suspected that the girl was being trafficked, and this needed to be investigated. De Jesus answered all the questions he was asked, and quickly cleared up any confusion. De Jesus acknowledges that the authorities were very professional, and quickly saw the situation for what it was.
De Jesus says he reached out to American Airlines about this, but got absolutely nowhere. The airline issued the following statement to media:
“Our frontline team members are trained to navigate a variety of safety issues, including recognizing the potential signs of human trafficking. We strive to create a positive, welcoming environment for everyone who travels with us and apologize for any misunderstanding that may have occurred.”
De Jesus acknowledges that human trafficking is a serious matter, but just wishes the staff had gone about the interaction differently:
“Human trafficking is a very serious thing. But what we went through and the fear of that wasn’t nice. I just wish that they would have maybe talked to me more. Maybe whoever, the person that made the judgment, should have come over and had a conversation with me. I just want to know what kind of training they do. And is it enough?”
This is a tough situation…
For quite some time, the airline industry has proudly highlighted how it is training employees to spot human trafficking. The challenge is that it seems that they’ve trained employees just enough to get themselves in trouble, but not enough to do this in an intelligent way.
We see a story like this with some frequency, and I can’t help but notice one theme — it’s almost never a white parent and a white child being accused of human trafficking. It almost always involves passengers who are Hispanic, Black, Asian, etc. I can’t imagine that’s a coincidence.
I absolutely believe that the crew thought they were doing the right thing by reporting the man. The problem is that if flight attendants are going to investigate trafficking, they need to be better trained and have better resources. For example, shouldn’t there be some step between a flight attendant asking a child a few questions, and a passenger being interrogated on the ground in front of his daughter? Couldn’t some research be done in the background during the flight?
For so long we’ve been taught “if you see something, say something,” but there should probably be limits to that. Along similar lines, over the years we’ve seen a countless number of stories of people being removed from flights for speaking Arabic, because they “seemed suspicious.” Just because someone is different doesn’t mean they’re suspicious, and there should be some sort of threshold for deciding when a claim should be taken seriously.
I totally get the “better safe than sorry” mentality, but for us white folks, that’s also a pretty easy argument to make. We’re not usually the people who are presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Bottom line
An American Airlines crew on a recent Seattle to Charlotte flight accused a father of trafficking his daughter. The pair were traveling together, and when the father went to use the bathroom, the crew asked the daughter some questions. Nothing else happened during the flight, but upon landing, the father was questioned by authorities, before eventually being released.
What do you make of this situation?
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