By Nina Shapiro
Aug. 13, 2023 at 6:00 am
Seattle Times staff reporter
Seattle Muslim leader Farid Sulayman said it was the usual drill for him last month when he flew to California to chaperone a youth basketball tournament. Checking in online proved impossible. At the ticket counter, he got a boarding pass with a special stamp — “SSSS” — indicating he would need an extra security screening.
He was told to go to a specific line, where federal agents ushered him past everyone else to search, as he put it, “every inch of my bag.” He felt all eyes on him.
At the gate, he found more Transportation Security Administration agents ostensibly conducting a random passenger search, which he found hard to believe because one agent walked straight to him.