Zenon Evans
Kahler Nygard, 22, of Minnesota was called off a plane by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) when it landed in Colorado earlier this month. He filmed his unsettling encounter with the agency.
“I’m the only one walking off the plane,” Nygard states in the first video he posted on Youtube six days ago. “They let me fly all the way to Denver. Everyone’s wondering what’s going on with me,” he says as heads turn toward him. “No, I have not committed a crime.”
His plane tickets, like those of about 14,000 other individuals, are apparently marked by the TSA “SSSS” for Secondary Security Screening Selection. That means he gets to go through all those extra pat-downs every time he wants to travel through the air for unknown reasons based on hazy criteria.
His second video has all the creepy action. Once he gets off the plane, a TSA agent named Andrew Grossman claims the screening of Nygard was “not completed” in Minnesota, so they need to re-examine “his body and his bags” now. The agent calls Nygard “pretty objectionable” for filming the encounter, demands to see his boarding pass, and threatens to call Denver police on him for not complying.
Regarding the boarding pass, Nygard responds “I misplaced it.” This seems to stump Grossman, as do Nygard’s many valid questions. He repeatedly asks if he’s being detained, and gets a different, mushy answer each time. He asks why he needs to be screened after a flight since he traveled safely from one location to the other, and the agent says, “I’m not going to argue with you.” He asks under which statute or law he’s being detained, and the agent replies, “I’m following my orders.”
Watch the encounter here:
He walked out of the airport despite the agent’s demands, and according to NBC, “Nygard says he flew back to Minneapolis [last] Thursday. Besides another pat-down, he says there were no issues.” He wasn’t arrested as the agent threatened, but the TSA says it “is investigating the case.”
