Get Patch's daily newsletter and real-time news alerts. DEARBORN, MI – A mother and her 7-month-old son were passing through security at Detroit Metropolitan Airport when they were pulled from line, detained and subjected to vigorous searches, including a chemical treatment of the boy, because one of their tickets included a special code used to alert security agents and airline personnel.

The code — SSS — tells them that the passenger has been listed on the government's Terroristic Screening Database, commonly known as "the watch list," which designates more than 1.5 million people, mostly Americans, as "suspected or known terrorists." The woman's ticket had no such code. Her son's did. The United States government had designated this tiny boy, just beginning to crawl, a known or suspected terrorist.

A lawsuit over the list filed Tuesday against the U.S. government cites the Detroit incident as just one of many that illustrate how haphazardly Americans have been secretly but officially tied to terrorism unknown to them and with no reviewable proof. Filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia by the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the suit claims that placement on the watch list is motivated more by religious profiling than security threats.

Inclusion goes far beyond added inconveniences during travel. The lawsuit claims what respected studies have found true: names on the list have been disseminated to local and state law enforcement, foreign governments, corporations, banks, border agents and airlines, leading to harassment, job refusals, arbitrary closures of checking accounts and confinement in jail cells for hours at a time. One plaintiff, leaving Kuwait with renewed visa in hand, was abducted by government security agents, beaten and held for more than a year before his release, the lawsuit alleges.

CAIR fficials said people who have not been placed on the list are commonly detained because people with the same or similar names are and that the only "evidence" of terrorist ties to many on the list is "being Muslim."

"The terrorism watch lists are premised on the false notion that the government can somehow accurately predict whether an innocent American citizen will commit a crime in the future based on religious affiliation or First Amendment activities," CAIR's legal director, Lena F. Masri, said in a statement. "Our lawsuits challenge the wrongful designation of thousands upon thousands of American Muslims as known or suspected terrorists without due process."

The suit seeks monetary relief for Baby Doe and the others. The placement of Baby Doe, an Alameda County, CA, infant whose parents have Michigan ties, "highlights the recklessness the FBI engages in when designating people for the list," Masri told Patch. "There's a complete lack of due process.