Mom claims Southwest Airlines accused her of smuggling her biracial daughter

(CNN) – A California woman accuses southwest Airlines of racial discrimination because she says she was suspected of human trafficking while traveling with her biracial daughter.

Mary MacCarthy of Los Angeles told CNN she was flying to Denver with her 10-year-old daughter, Moira, on October 22 after receiving news that her brother had suddenly died.

MacCarthy said they made a brief layover in San Jose and boarded another Southwest flight, but found they couldn’t sit together.

“I asked the flight attendants if we could sit together, but they told us each would have to take a middle seat,” MacCarthy said. “So, with their permission, I asked other passengers if they could kindly change so we could be together, especially since my daughter was grieving, and they did. The people are nice.”

When they arrived in Denver, MacCarthy said, she and her daughter were greeted on the catwalk by two police officers. denver police.

“I was quite shocked; having lost my brother the night before, I thought someone else in my family had died and the police had been dispatched to break the news,” MacCarthy wrote in an email to the Southwest Airlines media team, which was included in the police report.

“As for my daughter, she was terribly scared: she was already experiencing the trauma of her uncle’s death, and she is afraid of the police because of the constant headlines about how the police treat blacks (she is black). to sob and it was inconsolable, “his email read.

Officers assured her that nothing was wrong, but said they wanted to question her and her daughter, MacCarthy said.

“They said they were here because my daughter and I were reported for suspicious behavior, acting suspiciously before boarding and during boarding,” he said.

“I took out my phone and immediately started recording. I told (the agent) who we were and that my daughter was crying because she had lost a relative,” MacCarthy said.

According to a Denver police report, “Both the mother and the girl were acquitted.”

The report also noted that officers were responding to a “possible human trafficking case reported by the South West flight attendant,” but MacCarthy says only two weeks later did she learn that she was suspected of human trafficking.

“I got a call from the Denver Police Human Trafficking Unit to inform me that they were following up on the incident,” he told CNN.

CNN contacted the Denver Police Department Sunday afternoon about MacCarthy’s claim, but has received no response.

MacCarthy accuses Southwest Airlines of racial discrimination. She says she has hired a lawyer and wants the airline to be “fully liable.”

“I gave the airline enough time to contact me and apologize; more than two weeks later, I still haven’t received anything more than two short autoresponders. The time for an apology is over,” MacCarthy said.

In his email to the Southwest media team, MacCarthy said he wanted a written apology from the airline, immediate refund of the full price of his tickets, and “additional compensation to account for the trauma imposed on an innocent family, and especially to a ten-year-old black girl. “

Southwest Airlines said it is “disheartened” by MacCarthy’s account of the events and plans to contact her.

“We are conducting a review of the situation internally and will contact the Customer to address their concerns and offer our apologies for their experience traveling with us. Our employees receive robust training on human trafficking. Above all, Southwest Airlines takes pride in providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for the millions of Customers who travel with us each year, “Southwest Airlines spokesman Dan Landson said in a statement to CNN on Sunday.

“If it had been a white kid, he wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow,” MacCarthy’s attorney David Lane told CNN.