CUSTOMS TIGHTENS DETENTION RULES

Magistrate's Approval To Be Sought For Extended Searches

The U.S. Customs Service, faced with allegations that it conducts abusive
searches of airline passengers in its efforts to ferret out drug smugglers,
announced yesterday that it will seek the approval of a federal magistrate
when detaining travelers for more than four hours.

Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the policy change would take
effect Oct. 1. At most airports and other border crossings, Customs can
detain passengers for lengthy periods--sometimes days--without court
approval. The procedure has helped engulf Customs in allegations that it
wrongly targets blacks and Hispanics as suspected smugglers.

During the detentions, Customs officers use "personal searches," such as
pat-downs and strip searches, to help catch smugglers who hide cocaine or
heroin in their clothes or swallow packets of the drugs. But the searches no
longer seem as effective as in past years, officials said. Fiscal 1998 data,
for example, show that of the 3,017 passengers who had to take off part of
their clothing for a Customs inspection, only 28 percent were carrying
illegal drugs.

Yesterday, in a meeting with reporters, Kelly said his decision to bring
federal magistrates into agency operations would help ensure that Customs
inspectors have a "reasonable suspicion" to continue detaining travelers.

"We're taking people's liberty away. We want judicial review of that. We
want oversight as soon as reasonably possible," Kelly said. If the judge
decides there are no reasonable grounds to continue holding an airline
passenger, Kelly added, then the traveler will be released.

If reasonable suspicion is present, Customs may continue to hold the person
and may ask for consent to medically supervised body searches. If consent is
not given, Customs would have the option to proceed with X-rays, physical
exams and the monitoring of bowel movements.

Customs's broad power to detain and search passengers has been upheld by the
Supreme Court, but the tactics used have drawn strong criticism and lawsuits
in recent months.

In May, a House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, at the request of
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), held a hearing on Customs searches and whether they
involved "racial profiling."

At the hearing, a Hispanic woman from New York said she was detained in 1994
for 25 hours at San Francisco International Airport, strip-searched, forced
to take laxatives by Customs agents and not allowed to make phone calls. A
black Florida woman testified that she was detained for two days in Miami in
1997, handcuffed to a hospital bed rail and forced to take laxatives, even
though she was seven months pregnant at the time. Neither was carrying drugs.

Kelly, who took over at Customs a year ago, has moved swiftly to address
such criticism by revamping the lines of authority, transferring senior
officials and cracking down on misconduct.

Under Kelly's new rules, supervisors must approve pat-down searches. If
agents want to take travelers off airport grounds to hospitals for intrusive
body searches, they must receive approval from the top Customs official at
the airport, in consultation with government lawyers.

Kelly also named an outside commission to investigate allegations of racial
bias in the agency. The panel should submit its recommendations by early
next month, Kelly said.

Customs installed a new computerized system in May to collect data on the
race, sex, age and citizenship of airline passengers who undergo searches.
Previously, the agency did not gather demographic data on a consistent basis.

Using race as a criterion to search travelers "is certainly not part of our
policy. We have strongly prohibited that in our [employee] handbook, but we
want to make certain it is not part of our practices," Kelly said.

Lewis called Kelly's decision to involve a federal magistrate in detention
cases "a necessary step and a right step."

In another policy change, Kelly said Customs would try to help airline
passengers resume their trips when detained but found not to be smuggling
drugs. For passengers with interrupted travel plans, Kelly said Customs
would help arrange for a new flight or an overnight hotel stay and pay for
those expenses.