I was taking pictures of my daughters. A stranger thought I was exploiting them.

[MADem]

111. No, we don't.

The HS guy handled the interaction poorly, that is true.

He thought he saw a white guy exploiting two young girls. He could have verified that wasn't the case simply by using his eyes and ears, rather than inserting himself into the dynamic and portentously asking if the young girls were OK.

The father, as I have said in this thread, should have photographed the HS agent (and maybe published his pic instead of his kids') and gotten his name/card, so that his input could have been made a formal part of the story. Right now, we're only hearing one side of this event.

I'd also be interested in hearing how HS handles the training for this kind of thing.

Human trafficking IS a huge problem. Twenty million people around the world are victims of it. Without the input of the HS agent, named and quoted in the article, we only have the perceptions of the caucasian father who had experienced, for the first time, racial profiling--and he didn't like it much. Really, who does?

If you read the article carefully, you will see that the father himself had some mixed feelings about the encounter, as well. He didn't so much object to the agent's vigilance as his manner.