CUSTOMS IMPOSES NEW LIMITS ON AIRPORT DRUG SEARCHES

WASHINGTON - Caught in the fierce controversy over "racial profiling," the
U.S. Customs Service is imposing new limits on its screening of airline
passengers to intercept illicit drug shipments.

Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday that the agency, which
seeks to catch contraband entering the country, will no longer detain
airline travelers suspected of smuggling narcotics for more than four hours
without specific approval of a federal magistrate.

It will also require customs officers to notify an attorney or friend of
the passenger, if asked to do so, when the traveler is detained for more
than two hours. In cases where no drugs are found, the agency will help
travelers whose trips have been disrupted continue on their way.

The changes come as the Customs Service is facing at least a dozen lawsuits
filed by angry passengers, including a class-action suit in Chicago
covering 100 black women who alleged they were singled out because of their
race and gender.

Customs officials conducted searches of more than 50,000 international
travelers, from pat-downs to strip searches, in fiscal 1998, the service said.

Top customs officials are vowing to base such searches on concrete evidence
or specific intelligence, rather than picking out persons based on race and
appearance. Experience shows that certain flights from certain countries
carry a higher risk of smugglers, they say.

The new measures mark "a sharp departure from past practice and represent a
self-imposed restraint on customs search authority, which federal courts
have always liberally upheld," Kelly said.

The Supreme Court has ruled that customs officers at airports and border
crossings don't need the probable cause or warrants that police need to
conduct searches. Customs agents can perform a strip search based on
"reasonable suspicion" that someone might be hiding something illegal, the
justices have held.

But Kelly said, "We believe that we can catch drug smugglers without unduly
jeopardizing personal dignity and individual rights."

Under the new rule, effective Oct. 1, Customs would have to convince a
federal magistrate that it had "reasonable suspicion" for keeping a
passenger in custody beyond four hours.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the move a step in the right
direction. But the ACLU said the reasonable-suspicion standard is
relatively easy to meet and may not be sufficient to "protect people from
abusive or discriminatory searches," said legislative counsel Gregory Nojeim.