After airport pat-down, US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy’s daughter calls TSA ‘unconstitutional’

NEW YORK – A daughter of US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy denounced an “absurdly invasive pat-down” at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint on social media on Dec 18, suggesting that if her father were in charge of the agency, he would try to abolish it.

In a series of posts on social platform X, Ms Evita Duffy-Alfonso claimed that she had nearly missed her flight after declining to go through the body scanner.

Ms Duffy-Alfonso, who said she is pregnant, said she waited 15 minutes for a pat-down. She said the TSA agents, whom she described as “passive-aggressive”, tried to pressure her to pass through the scanner, insisting it was safe for pregnant passengers.

“All this for an unconstitutional agency that isn’t even good at its job,” Ms Duffy-Alfonso wrote on X. “The ‘golden age of transportation’ cannot begin until the TSA is gone.”

Ms Duffy-Alfonso’s posts on Dec 18 build on past views she has aired about the TSA.

In June, she said in a post that the agency’s existence violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, adding that the TSA “needs to be abolished”.

“I should not be treated like a terrorist for travelling within my own country by an agency that’s trash at its job anyway,” she wrote.

As transportation secretary, Mr Duffy leads the agency that oversees federal transportation projects and sets safety regulations for air travel, among other modes of transportation.

He does not control the TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, led by secretary Kristi Noem. Mr Duffy often talks about creating a “golden age of travel”, which he recently said included dressing better while flying.

But if her father were responsible for the TSA, Ms Duffy-Alfonso said in one of the posts on Dec 18, he would “radically limit it and lobby Congress to abolish it”.

The TSA was established after the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, to make air travel safer.

Before the attack, passengers encountered fewer restrictions, and private contractors handled airport security. Travellers now face stricter scanning and a long list of prohibited items.

According to the TSA, all airport screening equipment, including metal detectors and body scanners, is safe for pregnant travellers.

But passengers can opt out and instead receive a physical pat-down, the agency said on its website.

The body scanners at US airports rely on millimetre wave technology that uses radio waves, not X-rays. This type of technology emits far less energy than a cellphone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The TSA has made several major changes to its screening process in 2025, including allowing all travellers to keep their shoes on and requiring Real ID-compliant documents for domestic air travel.

A TSA spokesperson said the agency was “aware of the incident” and took complaints about airport security screening seriously.

The Transportation Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms Duffy-Alfonso did not respond to a message requesting comment, and Mr Duffy has not publicly responded to her posts. NYTIMES