In horrifying detail, women accuse U.S. customs officers of invasive body searches

[DonViejo]

Source: The Washington Post



By Susan Ferriss | Center for Public Integrity

August 19 at 7:00 AM

Tameika Lovell was retrieving luggage at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport when Customs and Border Protection officers detained her for a random search. It was Nov. 27, 2016, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the school counselor from Long Island had just returned from a short Jamaica vacation. Lovell, who is black, had been stopped before, but this time a CBP supervisor began asking questions she hadn’t heard previously.

“Don’t you think you’re spending too much money traveling?” Lovell, 34, recalls a CBP supervisor asking.

What happened next is the subject of a harrowing lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Inside a secure room, Lovell’s litigation alleges, a female CBP officer searched Lovell’s belongings, presumably for illegal drugs, and asked if she was using a tampon or sanitary pad. The question upset her, but Lovell replied “no” and complied when told to remove her shoes, lift her arms and spread her legs.

As a second female officer observed, hand on her firearm, the lawsuit says, the first officer touched Lovell “from head to toe” before ordering her to squat. Lovell was clothed, but the lawsuit claims that the officer squeezed Lovell’s breasts, and, “placed her right hand into [Lovell’s] pants ‘forcibly’ inserting four gloved fingers into plaintiff’s vagina” before parting Lovell’s buttocks “for viewing.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-horrifying-detail-women-accuse-us-customs-officers-of-invasive-body-searches/2018/08/18/ad7b7d82-9b38-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html

[ornotna]

1. "Don't you think you're spending too much money traveling?"

How does one even react to this shit? I hope her lawsuit is very successful.

[Mc Mike]

2. That's the kind of small government and freedom the repugs have in mind.

[pazzyanne]

3. And so begins the assault on average American citizens.

If you think we are not living in perilous times, you are asleep at the wheel.

[2naSalit]

4. One reason I don't travel much...

I used to be harassed before 2001, not into it now.

[Dustlawyer]

12. I have a very common name which has been on the FAA No Fly list since

December 2001. I have had multiple guns pulled on me in an airport, repeated searches, x-rays and searches of my luggage, delays, missed flights... I even went so far as to obtain a Texas concealed weapons permit just to be able to show I passed their background check. I also did it because of talk about denying gun rights to people on the No Fly list. While I still haven’t purchased a gun, I want to preserve my right to one if I choose.

There is no due process to getting your name removed from the list yet they want to use it to substitute as probable cause that I have done something wrong. The story I got back then was that a terrorist from South Yemen used my common name as an alias once. Not sure I even believe that one.

I have never been asked to undergo a strip search, but if they did it would be refused and a suit would be filed. I do not recognize my country any longer because I did not grow up in an authoritarian state!

[gyroscope]

5. Land of the not so free

turning the country into a police state and corporate dictatorship is the republican wet dream.

[IronLionZion]

6. Give people a little bit of power and they will abuse it

TSA is notorious for pulling attractive women and minorities aside for "randomly selected" enhanced screenings by hand.

And I've seen customs officers harass elderly grandmothers with detailed searches of their bags as if they might be dangerous drug smugglers. Because brown or black skin is a sign of drug smuggling.

As bad as we have it in the US, it is even worse when traveling overseas to some countries where they think it would punish Trump somehow to harass Americans.

One would think the airline industry or some other powerful group would stand up for the rights of their customers to avoid losing business from people who get fed up by this abuse.

[magicarpet]

7. Fascism is flourishing,... Don't fight it,... Enjoy it.

[Bayard]

8. Holy Crap!

Who gives the orders for these officers to do this? I'd like to see the stats on what ethnicities they target for these extreme searches.

[Jedi Guy]

9. I hate dealing with CBP, they're almost universally pricks.

I flew to Canada for the holidays the year my wife and I got married. On my return, when going through customs in Pearson, the CBP agent asked me what I'd been doing in Canada for the month. I told him I'd spent the holidays with my wife and her family, as it was our first Christmas as a married couple.

The jackwagon thought about it for a moment, then asked, "So wait, you live in the States and your wife lives in Canada?" When I nodded, he replied, "What kind of marriage is that?" I was absolutely floored that he'd said that, and replied, "Who are you, Doctor Phil? My marriage is none of your concern." He didn't much appreciate that remark, though fortunately he didn't press the issue. I filed a complaint once I got home, and despite assurances that it would be "investigated" I never heard anything further.

They harassed my wife several times when she came to visit me in the States, before and after we were married. She still has to fight down anxiety attacks every time we cross the border. The only time they don't give her shit is when she's with me.

So yeah, based on my experiences with these assholes, I can totally believe they did this to Ms. Lovell. I hope her lawsuit results in some heads rolling.

[alwaysinasnit]

10. An incremental approach...

First there was the "don't touch my junk" pat-downs

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/investigate-the-tsa-not-t_b_784391.html

The national outrage was loud and angry but has died down since then. Now, the searches are much more invasive. I believe that we are being acculturated to new abuses of our liberties.

[NJCher]

11. does one have the option of walking away?

because if so, I'd tell them to stop the search and that it's not worth it to me. If that's the price one has to pay to travel, then forget it, I'm not going.

I would then go to my credit card company and refuse to pay for my ticket.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

13. This is beyond outrageous

This is sexual assault.

If anyone tried to do this to me, I'm afraid, I'd get arrested as there is NO way in Hell that I would allow this invasion of my body by groping minimum-wage government thugs on a power trip.