This 6-Year-Old Boy is on the No-Fly List

Meet Syed Adam Ahmed, a 6 year old Canadian hockey fan who wishes he could travel to America. Ever since he was a toddler, the little boy has flagged airport security. Some have suggested the boy’s listing on Canada’s “Deemed High Profile” list could be due to his name having been wrongly placed on the US no-fly list.

The CBC reports:

Syed Adam Ahmed’s family has kept him unaware of the security attention surrounding him, but they say they have repeatedly gotten in touch with airline staff and government officials to find out why their son has been targeted.

“We try to keep him protected from all this stuff, because we don’t want him to feel singled out and stigmatized,” Adam’s mother, Khadija Cajee, told CBC News.

Cajee and her husband, Sulemaan Ahmed, said they never got a straight answer from staff at the Transportation and Public Safety departments about what list their son might be on — or whether he is even on it.

Instead, it was an Air Canada agent who tipped them off when Adam was just a toddler, his mother said.

“Every agent has been really sympathetic to our situation,” Cajee said. “There are always eye rolls, they’re always in disbelief. A lot of times they think it’s my husband so they look at him, but he always says to them, ‘No, it’s the little guy down there.'”

The whole mess should remind us how problematic and prone to error such watch lists can be. Remember Adam when people suggest we start penalizing people on these lists.