Airports have denied a claim by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, that the sequester is already causing long delays for travelers at security screening checkpoints.
Ms Napolitano said today that major airports were seeing lines "150 to 200 per cent as long as we would normally expect" as result of the federal spending cuts that went into force on Friday.
"We're already seeing the effects at some of the ports of entry, the big airports, for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend," she told a breakfast event organised by Politico.
When pressed for specifics she cited Chicago's O'Hare, Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), adding: "I don't mean to scare, I mean to inform."
However, when contacted by The Daily Telegraph, spokespeople for both O'Hare and LAX, as well as representatives from the travel industry, denied that airports had been hit by delays.
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