A 95-year-old woman who was flying from Florida to Michigan for life's last phase was forced by airport security officials to remove her adult diaper, says her family.
The woman had been brought to an airport in north-west Florida on June 18 by her daughter for a flight to Hastings, Michigan, in a wheelchair.
Department of Homeland Security agents detained the woman alone in a room, daughter Jean Weber told CNN on Sunday.
Security agents emerged later with the older woman and told Weber to take her to the public bathroom and remove the adult diaper.
Weber said she tried to explain to the agents that her mother was very ill with leukaemia.
"I told them she was going back to Michigan to die," Weber said.
"At that time, all I could think about is why they are doing this to a 95-year-old woman who is in a wheelchair? She's in ill health and she just wanted to go home," Weber told The Detroit News from her home in Destin, Florida.
Weber said she was so upset when she came back to security screening from the bathroom that she started to cry, at which point she herself was detained.
"I was crying. They felt I was a security risk," she said.
Her mother managed to make it to the plane on time, but Weber was then held up as agents tested everything in her purse and on her body, and missed the departure. She said she was not sure if she would ever see her mother again alive.
Weber has filed a complaint with the Transportation Security Administration, which was organised after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
The agency stood by its security officers on Sunday, saying that they "acted professionally and according to proper procedure".
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