Another ICTS question
 

Hi everyone--I have a question about ICTS sticker colours. These are the little stickers they put at the back of your passport cover if you are traveling to the US on one of the American carriers.

I recently accompanied my elderly parents to LHR for their UA flight back home after visiting me in London where live. The ICTS agent (who I originally thought was a UA employee) asked some questions about packing your own bags, etc and then put a brown sticker on the back of each of their US passports. Then I asked the agent if there were special services that could help bring my parents to their gate since they don't understand that much English and also have a hard time walking. He said that you have to have booked a wheelchair. Fine. He then proceeded to put two blue stickers on the back of each passport, covering up the brown sticker he had originally put on.

After they landed, my parents relayed to me that they were led to special rooms for interrogation and deep searches of their carry on luggage and frisking at TWO different checkpoints before they were allowed on the plane. I believe it is because of the blue stickers that were placed on their passports. When the agent first put them on I naively thought he was flagging them as passengers who needed special assistance.

My parents were very upset over this special treatment (although I explained that brown people face this every day, so this one time they happened to get flagged was bad luck and they shouldn't be upset since this was just one flight and not an everyday occurrence for them. But their yellow privilege was bruised nonetheless).

So my questions for you guys are as follows:
Who are these ICTS people? Do they work for the airport or for the airline? Does BA also employ them or is it just the US carriers? Why can't the people at the check in counter or bag drop counter ask these questions instead?

Also, I have not been able to find documentation anywhere about what the different colored stickers mean. And there were a few travel forums where it is mentioned, but people who have asked the ICTS agents are typically told off by them.


Thanks in advance!

ICTS at airports work for the airlines, but they are wanted and/or approved by the relevant governments -- those being the operating carrier's home country and the airport's host country government.

IIRC, the different colored stickers are mainly there to make sure the ICTS and other airline agents quickly know the passenger has been examined by ICTS on or about the day of the flight and been cleared to move forward in the travel process.

AFAIK the ICTS stickers are, as GUWonder states, simply used to indicate that the passport holder has answered the random and pointless questions that the US Government requires be asked.

The trigger for the extra security usually comes in the form of an SSSS notation on the boarding pass. If your parents still have their boarding passes, take a look to see if they have that notation on them. I have no idea what triggers an SSSS notation (it's kept confidential) but this would be done by officialdom. Otherwise, the extra security should be truly random.

If I think back to the few times I've had extra official attention of that nature, on each occasion it has been when there was some reason why I had to interact with one of the officials by asking an extra question, or when I was late to the gate. My guess is that's some form of trigger - perhaps they think that the question or lateness has been thrown in by the passenger in order to distract attention. If that's the case, then asking for a wheelchair from the agents almost certainly was the trigger.

And, yes, a different coloured sticker could well be the flag that the agent wasn't comfortable with his interrogation.

If the sticker of a sort is there and it's not got a hand notation for the date or initials, the odds rise of getting sent for secondary at the gate.