Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s daughter is branding the TSA an “unconstitutional” agency after receiving a pat-down that she requested.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the eldest of Duffy’s nine children with wife Rachel Campos, claims the agency nearly made her miss her flight despite not showing up to the airport early enough and knowing she would require extra security.
“I nearly missed my flight this morning after the TSA made me wait 15 minutes for a pat-down because I’m pregnant and didn’t feel like getting radiation exposure from their body scanner,” she complained on social media.
“The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman into just walking through the scanner because it’s ‘safe.’ After finally getting the absurdly invasive pat-down, I barely made my flight. All this for an unconstitutional agency that isn’t even good at its job,” she continued.
Sean Duffy’s daughter refused to go through the metal detector out of concern for radiation impacting her fetus. Evita Duffy-Alfonso/ Instagram
Duffy-Alfonso, 26, then claimed that her experience “would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR).”
“Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country,” she posted. “Is this freedom? Travel, brought to you by George Orwell—and the privilege of convenience based solely on your willingness to surrender biometric data and submit to radiation exposure?”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the TSA for comment.
Modern body scanners used by the TSA are widely considered safe for pregnant women. Any radiation exposure from security technology is seen as “negligible” to the fetus, according to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists.
One commenter on Duffy-Alfonso’s post pointed out that she should have arrived at the airport earlier if she knew she would need extra time at security.
She responded by saying she “arrived at the airport an hour and 10 minutes before my flight,” seemingly deeming that enough time.
Duffy-Alfonso claimed she was subject to an “absurdly invasive pat-down.” Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
Major U.S. airlines, including American, Delta, and United, all recommend that passengers get to the airport at least two hours ahead of domestic flights and three hours ahead of international flights.
While TSA does not fall under her father’s jurisdiction at the Transportation Department, Duffy-Alfonso said “if he did have TSA, he’d radically limit it and lobby Congress to abolish it.” She also claimed that the agency violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Katie Miller, MAGA podcaster and wife of Stephen Miller, responded to Duffy-Alfonso’s post saying, “The government is so bad at data it has no idea what to do with biometric data anyway.”
