A Virginia father was left baffled when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant accused him of human trafficking while flying home with his teenage daughter and her girlfriend after a trip to Las Vegas.

John Kerrigan was boarding his connecting flight to Virginia Beach at Denver International Airport on Oct. 21 with his 15-year-old daughter and her 16-year-old friend when flight attendants became concerned.

A flight attendant approached the two teenagers and asked them about their relationship with Kerrigan, who had left her seat to use the plane’s restroom.

“She keeps asking if we’re okay and if we know you,” Kerrigan recalled his daughter telling him, according to WAVY. “And I said I thought it was weird.”

Unknown to the father or the teenage girls, the flight crew had contacted Norfolk International Airport and reported Kerrigan as a suspected human trafficker.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Light Initiative issues guidelines and training for airport and airline crews to familiarize themselves with the signs of human trafficking.

One of the common indicators of heinous crime includes “an inauthentic relationship: especially with a parent or guardian and a child.”

Southwest employees are trained on the warning signs of human trafficking and are taught protocols for alerting law enforcement authorities, according to the airline’s website.

Three police officers boarded the plane and confronted the trio as they arrived at the Virginia gate.

“(They said), “Sir, wilt thou follow us? We’d like to ask you a few questions,’” ​​Kerrigan said.

Kerrigan found his public escort quite humiliating and contested his removal from the flight.

“I said, ‘That’s offensive.’ I found it very offensive. I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong,” he added.

Airport officials questioned Kerrigan for 20 minutes but let him go without charging him.

The station contacted Southwest Airlines.

In September 2023, singer David Ryan Harris was flying with his biracial children when American Airlines employees accused him of trafficking them.

The “Don’t Look Down” hitmaker, 55, traveled from Atlanta to Los Angeles on Sept. 15 with his sons Truman and Hendrix.

“Apparently a flight attendant called ahead with some kind of concern that maybe my mixed kids weren’t my kids,” Harris said in the video posted on Sept. 23.

“Because they didn’t respond during an interaction with her. We are greeted, embarrassingly, by this AA employee and police officers. They questioned my children.

Harris received an apology, with the airline claiming its policies on suspected human trafficking were not followed.

More than 1,900 people were referred to U.S. attorneys for human trafficking offenses in 2022, according to the Department of Justice. Report on human trafficking published in October 2024.

Of the referrals, 1,656 were prosecuted, doubling the amount compared to 2012, with 1,118 convictions being made in 2022.

U.S. district courts charged 1,070 defendants with one of three trafficking (person, sex, and labor), 91% were male, 58% white, 20% black, 18% Hispanic, 95% U.S. citizens, and 71% had no previous convictions.