Do you have any traits that might have resulted in a TSA screener illegally profiling you?

edit to add: Just read above and it doesn't seem to be the case.

The second grope down sounds like a resolution grope down. Some reason for that.

Contact a lawyer, the heck with TSA's complaint process. They don't care nor do they respond favorably to complaints.

Sorry for the unpleasantness, but as far as I am concerned the TSA in JFK are the worst (ATL being a close second). They are arrogant, rude, condescending, and have an incredibly bad attitude (this is above and beyond the usual and expected NYC rudeness). And, at the risk of being accused of being racist, I have found that the non-Caucasian TSA workers in JFK treat Caucasians (at least this Caucasian female) like crap (worse than the other TSA workers). For this reason I hate flying through JFK.

Wow, SSSS with Pre-Check? That's what I'm surprised about. This can't be very common?I've never had an issue with GE/Pre-Check, knock on wood. Although the random freebie access they dish out is more than annoying. Not that that reaches the level of what you had to deal with.

SSSS is random and all pre-check pax are subject to it.

My wife has GE and has been subjected to SSSS flying from Western Europe. It's nothing more than a "we can screw with you so we will" exercise.

I got that it can be assigned randomly; just like PreCheck can be randomly assigned; just haven't been exposed to it myself in... what... three odd years or so with GE/PC? I'm assuming it only happened to your wife that one time? I suppose the CBP just wants to keep us guessing with randomized security measures.

///

OP, have you heard any-thing back?

I agree. Nothing I've ever read or heard has led me to think any Trusted Traveler program enrollment will shield a passenger from getting the dreaded SSSS. Granted I haven't gotten it since I enrolled in GE but I figure that's just luck just as I've always gotten PreCheck. Funny thing is that the only place I've ever gotten SSSS is LAS, in fact two out of last three flights out of there, but that was a couple of years ago when we were going there on a regular basis.

I am not trying to be a smart--s , but political correctness gone mad.

I also hate to suggest that idea, but honestly it had that feel. My Mother, my Sister and I were the only Caucasians in the room.

As part of the first pat down , the woman put her hands through my medium length hair. I had it pulled back with a clip as it was the easiest style for the 9 hour FCO-JFK flight, and the first thing she did was search my hair as though I was hiding something in my hair. Seriously.

Not a peep. :(

Sad fact of the matter is that you will likely not hear back from TSA unless you can generate some national attention pointing out the abuse to freedom that is TSA's stock in trade.

Your options are limited, either resign yourself to understanding that travel in this country is no longer a right and expect to be abused by government for any reason or no reason or retain a lawyer, pay big bucks for little chance of any findings against government.

That is really where you stand at this point.

Update:

Just got the standard rote email back from TSA. Very Yada Yada Yada and of course no surprise at all.

Be sure to also complain to your two Senators.

Push it as far as you feel like pushing it. The only hope of changing anything is for those few people who are irritated enough to refuse to accept this stupidity and abuse is to push back. It's so much easier to just give in to whatever they want and just get to your plane.

Maybe I actually did something once. I placed the NEXUS game with spectacular results a couple of times (at JFK). One time I had four clerks, including a supervisor, tell me the NEXUS card was no good, another time, I got the guy to take it, but then I said well why don't you know your job, why was there any problem, and he stopped me and got a supervisor to check, and the supervisor was just as dumb as him, and I wound up showing my driving license. So I wrote to this address I had, and some clerk wrote back that it wasn't supposed to happen like that, and also said something about how the clerks (only he called them officers) were on the front lines if anything happened to cause harm. I wrote back to him that they aren't on the front lines of anything, and telling them that is one of the reasons they act the way they act.

Anyway, every time I went through JFK after that until the time they put the Übermenschen lane in at T2/T4 (which basically took me away from that sort of problem) they actually did know what the NEXUS card was and passed me through like they're supposed to.

Coincidence? Probably yes, but I don't KNOW that my complaint had nothing to do with it.

Or, more likely, it means the screener just wants to show you who's the boss.