CBP personnel administer Heimlich to save toddler at BWI Airport

BALTIMORE – The quick, life-saving actions of four U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday will allow a toddler to see his second birthday.

The child, who arrived with his U.S. citizen mother and father from Germany, started seizing while in CBP’s passenger primary inspection queue. An alert CBP officer immediately radioed for medical assistance and a Supervisory CBP officer and a second CBP officer responded.

CBP also reported the medical emergency to BWI airport emergency medical services.

The supervisory CBP officer rushed the child to a secondary inspection area where he and a CBP agriculture specialist realized that the child was choking and turning blue. CBP personnel immediately initiated the Heimlich maneuver. After a second round of five back blows the child vomited and officers were able to clear the child’s airway.

Both CBP personnel continued to monitor the child’s breathing and heart rate until EMS arrived.

“Many of our Customs and Border Protection personnel are parents, so when they see a child in such distress it certainly has a profound effect on them that everybody wants to jump in to help. We are pleased that this child and his parents will get to soon celebrate his second birthday,” said CBP Area Port Director Adam Rottman in Baltimore. “We repeatedly train our frontline employees on CPR, AED, and other immediate live-saving measures to give travelers who experience a serious medical emergency in our inspection station a fighting chance to survive until EMS can arrive.”

EMS took the child and mother to a local Baltimore hospital where the child was reported in stable condition. 

CBP's border security mission is led at our nation’s Ports of Entry by CBP officers and agriculture specialists from the Office of Field Operations. CBP screens international travelers and cargo, and searches for illicit narcotics, unreported currency, weapons, counterfeit consumer goods, prohibited agriculture, invasive weeds and pests, and other illicit products that could potentially harm the American public, U.S. businesses, and our nation’s safety and economic vitality.

Learn more at www.CBP.gov.

Follow the Director of CBP’s Baltimore Field Office on X @DFOBaltimore and CBP’s Office of Field Operations on Instagram @cbpfieldops.