Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Tuesday that children under the age of 12 will not have to remove their shoes in airport security checkpoints, according to media reports.
Children will also not have not be subjected to pat-downs as part of new airport screening procedures. “We hope over the coming weeks and months to be able to begin rolling that out,” Napolitano told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, according to Reuters.
She said that under special circumstances, some children may have to remove their shoes or be subjected through enhanced security measures.
“There will always be some unpredictability built into the system, and there will always be random checks even for groups that we are looking at differently, such as children," she said, according to CBS News.
Napolitano added that the new measures would be put in place to streamline the process of going through security.
