Mother Says Southwest Airlines Employee Claimed She Was Trafficking Biracial Daughter

A white mother from California says she was accused of human trafficking while traveling with her biracial daughter on Southwest Airlines. 

Mary MacCarthy and her 10-year-old Moira were flying to Denver on Oct. 22 after Mary’s brother’s death, and during a transfer in San Jose, she claims flight attendants said they’d “each have to take a middle seat” on the plane, CNN reports. 

While other passengers moved for them, MacCarthy said she and Moira were greeted by Denver police upon their eventual arrival. 

“[Moira] was terribly frightened: she was already experiencing the trauma of her uncle’s death, and she is scared of police due to constant headlines about how police treat Black people (she is Black),” MacCarthy wrote in an email to the airline. “She began to sob and was inconsolable.”

She said that police met with the two because people felt they were “acting suspiciously before boarding and while boarding,” according to MacCarthy, so she grabbed her phone “immediately started recording.”

CNN shares that a report from Denver police claims it was a “possible Human Trafficking reported by South West flight attendant,” which MacCarthy found out about two weeks later when she got a call from the Denver Police human trafficking unit to check in.