The White House is defending the actions that led to a five-year-old boy being detained at a US airport for hours following President Donald Trump's immigration ban.

In a White House news briefing, spokesman Sean Spicer said, "to assume that just because of someone's age and gender that they don't pose a threat would be misguided and wrong."

The boy was detained at Washington D.C.'s Dulles airport on Saturday following Trump's order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

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