Employees of the Transportation Security Administration and the FBI have qualified immunity from a suit filed against them by a college student who was detained at the Philadelphia International Airport after Arabic-English flashcards with words such as “kill” and “bomb” were discovered in his luggage, the Third Circuit has ruled.
Plaintiff Nicholas George sued three TSA officials and two FBI officials who were assigned to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The 21-year-old U.S. citizen was scheduled to fly from Philadelphia to California to begin his senior year at Pomona College in 2009. He claims that after he arrived at the airport, he was detained, interrogated, handcuffed and then jailed, allegedly because he was carrying a deck of Arabic-English flashcards and a book critical of American interventionism, according to the opinion in George v. Rehiel.
