New America Media, News Report, Posted: Jul 01, 2010

The Department of Homeland Security placed a six-year-old native of Cleveland, Ohio, on its “terrorist watch list,” reports India-West.

Doctors Santhosh and Sapna Thomas found out that their young daughter Alyssa was on the DHS’s watch list in May, when the family was making a trip from Cleveland to Minneapolis to attend a first communion.

Neither Santhosh, who specializes in sports medicine, nor Sapna, a gastroenterologist, are on the list. Nor is Alyssa’s younger sister Nicole.

The family was allowed to fly and given a set of procedures to have Alyssa’s name removed from the list, which the Thomases would find out was no easy task. Weeks after they filed an online complaint with the DHS’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, young Alyssa received a form letter from the department, which, of course, she couldn’t read.

The letter noted that DHS could not confirm or deny that Alyssa was on the watch list, but would determine whether “corrections” needed to be made.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has also taken up the case on the Thomases’ behalf.

The “terrorist watch list” — different from the “no fly list” and “selectee list” — was established in 2007. The list, principally maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, has more than a million records representing 400,000 individuals, reports India-West.