British ‘terrorist’ baby interrogated at U.S. embassy after grandfather’s error

A 3-month-old British baby’s trip to Orlando, Fla., had to be postponed after his grandfather accidentally labeled him a terrorist.

Paul Kenyon was due to fly across the pond with his grandson, Harvey Kenyon-Cairns, but he made a mistake on the baby’s visa waiver form.

One of the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions asked, “Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?”, to which Kenyon accidentally checked ‘yes’.

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The family learned of the error when Harvey’s travel was denied.

“I couldn’t believe that they couldn’t see it was a genuine mistake and that a three-month-old baby would be no harm to anyone,” Kenyon told the Guardian.

The family was forced to drive 10 hours from Poynton, Cheshire to the U.S. embassy in London for questioning.

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“Baby Harvey was good as gold for the interview and never cried once. I thought about taking him along in an orange jumpsuit, but thought better of it,” said Kenyon. “They didn’t appear to have a sense of humour over it at all and couldn’t see the funny side.

“He’s obviously never engaged in genocide, or espionage, but he has sabotaged quite a few [diapers] in his time, though I didn’t tell them that at the U.S. embassy.”

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While the situation was resolved with the trip to London, it was not cleared up in time for the family’s initial trip so they were forced to spend $5,000 for new tickets for Harvey and his parents.

“It was a very expensive mistake, but I was hoping the U.S. embassy would realize that it was just a simple error without us having to jump through all the hoops,“ Kenyon told the Telegraph.

“If you are a terrorist, I suspect you’d not be ticking YES on the ESTA form anyway.”