“You Know I Only Get Minimum Wage, Right?” the TSA Officer Was Not Heard to Say

A Texas woman who claims she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

“I wouldn't wish this experience upon anyone,” Mandi Hamlin, 37, said at a news conference in Los Angeles. “My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”

Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman that she was wearing nipple piercings. The female agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the body piercings, Hamlin claimed.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

“Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her,” said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a well-known Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims. …

On its Web site, the TSA warns that passengers “may be additionally screened because of hidden items such as body piercings, which alarmed the metal detector.”

“If you are selected for additional screening, you may ask to remove your body piercing in private as an alternative to a pat-down search,” the site reads.

Hamlin would have accepted a “pat-down” had it been offered, Allred said, which alarmed the TSA officers involved. …

Allred said she might consider legal action if the TSA does not apologize. Hamlin was publicly humiliated and has “undergone an enormous amount of physical pain to have the nipple rings reinserted because of scar tissue,” Allred said.

Hamlin said her piercings have never set off an airport metal detector. She added that she will never fly out of Lubbock again.

“The conduct of TSA was cruel and unnecessary,” Allred said. “The last time that I checked a nipple was not a dangerous weapon.”


I don't know. There are some nipples I wouldn't want to see coming at me in a dark alley. That's why when I'm in unfamiliar surroundings, I stick to well-traveled, well lighted streets. Better safe than sorry.

Besides, Gloria, they didn't make her remove the nipple—just the rings. Did you even read the file?

How is it that Johnny Cochran got ridiculed from one side of the country to the other, but you've gone from one frivolous law suit to the next unscathed? The world is an amazing and mysterious place.