'Shocked and humiliated': Lawsuits accuse Customs, Border officers of invasive searches of minors, women

Monday, 20 August 2018The Center for Public Integrity

From New York to San Diego, government pays thousands to settle allegations of stripping, body cavity probing, forced hospital procedures

Tameika Lovell was retrieving baggage at New York City’s Kennedy Airport when two female U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped her for a “random search.”

It was Nov. 27, 2016, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the school counselor from Long Island had just arrived from a short Jamaica vacation. Lovell, who is black, had been stopped and felt profiled before, but this time a CBP supervisor began posing questions she hadn’t heard previously.

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

What allegedly happened next is outlined in a harrowing civil lawsuit Lovell filled in March in federal court. And the assertions aren’t unique, based on allegations in similar suits filed not just in New York but also in California, Arizona, Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Credit by- The Center for Public Integrity

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