Mother Accuses TSA Of Harsh Treatment Over Breast Milk

MIAMI, FL — A mother claimed on Friday she was treated harshly by TSA agents at Miami International Airport and threw away two bags of her baby's breast milk when they were flagged as potentially "explosive." Video of the incident was posted under Kim Park's Twitter account. Park said she was shaken by her treatment.

"You cannot take pictures, What are you doing," said one TSA agent, who identified himself as a supervisor on the video.

"I'm taking a video of my milk," Park insisted in the video. "It's sitting on the table and it's milk. It goes bad ... I want to speak to a supervisor now."

The TSA agent responded: "I am the supervisor. It is respect. We're doing our job."

According to the TSA website, "formula, breast milk and juice are allowed in reasonable quantities in carry-on bags." Mothers are instructed to remove such items from carry-on bags for a separate screening from other belongings.

"You do not need to travel with your child to bring breast milk," the agency instructs.

Park, whose Twitter account said she is a Korean and Panamanian actress from New York, told Patch that the incident occurred around 10 a.m. on Friday as she was preparing to board a flight from Miami to New York. She said the incident took place at the Terminal H security station near Gate 22.

"How are we supposed to normalize breastfeeding when they treat moms like this," she said in her post.

Sari Koshetz of TSA told Patch that breast milk and medicines larger than 3.4 ounces are permitted in the cabin of an aircraft after being screened. But any alarm during screening must be resolved.

"We are working to identify any staff member who was involved in this situation so we can determine what caused the alarm," Koshetz explained. "We can assure you that the TSA strives to treat all passengers with respect and any officer who did not treat this passenger with the utmost respect will receive remedial training."

Park said that another TSA employee first removed all of her stored breast milk from her cooler. "First time I’ve seen this," she explained. "The point of a cooler is to keep milk cold. The obvious thing to do is to remove one item at a time and put it back. I asked her to at least please close the cooler which she left open. She left it open twice."

Park said that the female TSA agent placed two bags containing breast milk on a detector, which flagged them as possible explosives.

"Without an apology or an explanation, she calls the supervisor without telling me she made a mistake," Park told Patch. "Apparently if you don’t dry the bag, it’ll flag it as explosive."

She said a supervisor arrived and told his agent that the bags were flagged because they were wet.

"I ask him to please put the milk in the cooler. He is arrogant and rude so I take my camera out, and he tells me during the video that I can’t take a video," Park said. "At this point, I’m nice about it and tell them to just throw the two bags away so we can move on. Then they call a manager. The manager shows up without letting me explain or speak at all — and in a condescending and rude tone, tells me I have two options — go through the procedures or have it all thrown out."

Park said she agreed to the screening procedures, which again flagged her breast milk for possible explosives.

"I tell them to just throw it out," Park said. "She tells me I need to go through a full pat down because of it even though it was the employee’s fault. No one apologized or explained that part to me. We were there for 24 minutes. My milk was room temperature by the time they were done. I have flown with milk to Mexico, Switzerland and Panama and not once have been treated so terribly."

The mother added she went public with her experience to make things easier for other moms.

"Breastfeeding and pumping is hard enough as it is," she told Patch.

Photo by Paul Scicchitano