Support NeoGAF

[Dalek]

Feds will pay $475,000 to settle “illegal body cavity search” case

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will now have to pay “Jane Doe,” a New Mexico woman, $475,000 to settle a lawsuit filed in December 2013. In the suit, Jane Doe alleged that she was detained at the US-Mexico border and subjected to an illegal cavity search by nearby hospital personnel. Authorities believed she had drugs on her person, but they found nothing after six hours of intimate searches.

CBP spokesman Roger Maier confirmed the settlement, but he noted it should “not be taken as an admission of liability or fault."

“CBP has policies, procedures, and training in place to ensure officers and agents treat travelers and those in custody with professionalism and courtesy, while protecting the civil rights, civil liberties, and well-being of every individual with whom we interact, and maintaining the focus of our mission to protect all citizens and visitors to the United States,” he told Ars in a statement.

In the 2013 civil complaint of Doe v. El Paso County Hospital et al, the woman is described as a married middle-aged woman from Lovington, New Mexico. She says she routinely traveled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico—immediately across the border from El Paso, Texas—to visit a close friend.

According to her civil complaint, Doe was finishing such a visit on December 8, 2012. She returned from Juarez, crossing on foot back into El Paso.

Doe was then informed that she was randomly selected for a secondary screening and was escorted to a private area. She was frisked and ordered to squat. Next, she was put in a line and a narcotics-trained dog seemed to give an alert that she may have drugs on her.

Doe was then taken to another private room and ordered to pull down her pants and crouch, which she did. A CBP agent then “examined her anus with a flashlight.” A moment later, she was commanded to lean backwards in this crouched position, where another female agent “parted Ms. Doe’s vulva with her hand, pressed her fingers into Ms. Doe’s vagina, and visually examined her genitalia with a flashlight.”

As the complaint continues:

Ms. Doe did not consent to this strip search nor to having her body touched in so intimate a way by government agents. Ms. Doe was understandably humiliated and she began crying.

Doe was ordered to get dressed again. The CBP then taped the cuffs of her pants to her body and “forcibly transported” her to the University Medical Center in El Paso, where she was given a laxative. After it took effect—and still no drugs were found—Doe was x-rayed.

When that also failed to turn up drugs, she was given a “forced gynecological exam” and had to submit to a CT scan. Six hours later, Doe was handed a “consent form”—she had not given her consent prior to the searches according to the suit. CBP told her that if she signed it, the government would pay for the cost of the exams; otherwise, she would have to foot the bill. Doe refused to sign, and she was eventually billed more than $5,000. She refused to pay that as well.

In the year that elapsed between when the incident happened and when the lawsuit was filed, Doe “has not been able to be intimate with her husband” and “stays at home whenever possible,” according to the suit.

Unreal. What the fuck?

 

[FZZ]

Yeah fuck everything about this

Disgusting

All over fucking drugs smfh what it wrong with the world

 

[FloatingDivider]

At first I was like yeah I'd get my holes checked for 475k (probably for less) but I don't think I'd be mentally equipped to handle 6 hours of genital scrutiny either. Glad she ended up getting paid and I hope it provides some mental comfort.

 

[TheOMan]

475 000 is way too little. Unreal. Of course, I'm sure the people that did this to her are still employed and won't be the ones footing the bill.

Gross.

 

[Particle Physicist]

475 000 is way too little. Unreal. Of course, I'm sure the people that did this to her are still employed and won't be the ones footing the bill.

Gross.

Seriously. This story is so fucked up. I wonder how often it happens. From the story it seems like they have a routine set out. So messed up.

 

[MrChocolate]

6 hours? What the fuck...?
I mean, I get the squat thing and maaaaybe the flashlight... but, laxative and then an Xray? plus 6 hours dealing with this? Nah.

 

[Dalek]

There was a similar story to this a few years ago - either in Arizona or New Mexico. This guy was in his car and just made an illegal turn or something. The police pulled him over and then basically did everything in the above article. They were certain he had drugs on him and they forced him to do x-rays, cavity searches, etc all night long.

Edit:
Ah! New Mexico!
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/16/justice/new-mexico-search-settlement/

A New Mexico man has settled with local authorities for $1.6 million after claiming police forced him to undergo "multiple digital penetrations and three enemas" on an invalid warrant and without finding any of the illicit drugs they were looking for.

David Eckert "feels gratified that the city and county acted quickly, and ... that they recognize his dignity and humanity," his lawyer, Joe Kennedy, said Thursday. "He expects that it won't happen to anyone else ever again."
Hidalgo County, New Mexico, Manager Jose Salazar, the top official in the county involved in the settlement, declined to comment on Thursday. And a CNN call to Deming, New Mexico, police Chief Brandon Gigante was not immediately returned.

Eckert, 54, who sued the county and police departments last year, said that he feels he "got some justice, as I think the settlement shows they were wrong to do what they did to me."
"I feel grateful to live in the United States," Eckert said in a statement posted on his lawyer's Facebook page. "Bad things happen, but in America there is a way to get justice.

The lawsuit laid out in vivid detail Eckert's version of his 12-hour ordeal early in January 2013.

According to a police affidavit accompanying that lawsuit, a detective asked a different officer to pull over Eckert's 1998 brown Dodge pickup truck for not properly stopping at a stop sign.
After Eckert was pulled over, a Deming police officer said that he saw Eckert "was avoiding eye contact with me," his "left hand began to shake," and he stood "erect (with) his legs together," the affidavit stated.
Eckert was told he could go home after a third officer issued him a traffic citation. But before he did, Eckert voluntarily consented to a search of him and his vehicle, according to the affidavit. A K-9 dog subsequently hit on a spot in the Dodge's driver's seat, though no drugs were found.

"Hidalgo County K-9 officer did inform me that he had dealt with Mr. Eckert on a previous case and stated that Mr. Eckert was known to insert drugs into his anal cavity and had been caught in Hidalgo County with drugs in his anal cavity," the affidavit said.

While CNN could not corroborate that claim, a search of Eckert's criminal history indicated he has been arrested several times on drug possession charges, though many of those charges were dismissed.
Outrage over highway body cavity search

Eckert was then put in "investigative detention" and transported around 2 p.m. to the Deming Police Department.

Sometime after that, a judge signed a search warrant "to include but not limited to his anal cavity."

His next stop was Gila Regional Medical Center, where the lawsuit states "no drugs were found" in "an X-ray and two digital searches of his rectum by two different doctors." One doctor at this time found nothing unusual in his stool.
Three enemas were conducted on Eckert after 10:20 p.m. A chest X-ray followed, succeeded by a colonoscopy around 1:25 a.m.

Again, in all these tests, authorities found "no drugs" on Eckert, according to his lawsuit.

"(Authorities) acted completely outside the bounds of human decency by orchestrating wholly superfluous physical body cavity searches performed by an unethical medical professional," the plaintiff asserted.
Because Eckert "merely looked nervous during a traffic stop," the lawsuit claims that authorities ended up violating his constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures on a number of grounds.
One was that "the language in the warrant was overly broad and, therefore, invalid," said the plaintiff, asserting that the chest X-ray and colonoscopy, for instance, weren't related or confined to the "anal cavity."
Moreover, many of the tests took place outside the 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. timeframe for which any such search warrant (unless otherwise authorized) is legally valid under New Mexico law, according to the lawsuit.
Eckert agreed to the $1.6 million settlement on December 20, according to his attorney, but it became public only in recent days.

The New Mexico man said, in his latest statement, that he wants to maintain his privacy and -- to whatever extent he can -- not have his "face ... be linked with jokes related to anal probing."
At the same time, Eckert said that he was heartened by those who relayed their sympathy and their own horror stories involving police on online articles about his lawsuit.
"I felt very helpless and alone that night," he wrote. "The comments I have read on news stories from people have made me feel much better and not so alone."

 

[Enco]

People behind this should at a minimum be fired + forced to pay a huge sum of money.

Fuck em.

 

[Straight Edge]

Feds need to pay much much more. This woman should never have to work again.

 

[killdatninja]

Not paid enough. I mean how much drugs could she be carrying in her body? Not enough to go through the amount of measures they did (and a big waste of our tax dollars)... How does this not stop after they spread her open the first time?

 

[GhostBed]

Nightmare fuel right there. This poor women was kidnapped and molested and then gets a $5000 medical bill. I could understand if she doesn't want to leave the house anymore.

The settlement is nice but that really doesn't fix what happened.

 

[Dick Justice]

The idea of forcing this on someone, and then trying to make them pay for it, is fucking disgusting.

 

[Enco]

Nightmare fuel right there. This poor women was kidnapped and molested and then gets a $5000 medical bill. I could understand if she doesn't want to leave the house anymore.

The settlement is nice but that really doesn't fix what happened.

Settlement aint shit.

Can't do anything with that amount of money. Maybe a house but that isn't going to fix your mind/life.

 

[Gattsu25]

The New Mexico government literally kidnapped and raped this woman, asked for her to consent after the fact, and then fined her when she refused to consent.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You war on drugs....

 

[MrChocolate]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You war on drugs....

I bet that building a wall would solve this.

 

[Sky Chief]

I can't believe she's settling for $475K. I don't think money can correct what she went through but even then that is way too little.

 

[Septimus Prime]

The idea of forcing this on someone, and then trying to make them pay for it, is fucking disgusting.

It's far, far worse that the consent form came after the cavity search and that they held paying for the exam hostage. Imagine if they succeeded in coercing her to sign it; then she'd have "consented" to what they did and would have much weaker grounds to press charges against them.