CUSTOMARY ABUSE

Time For Congress To Rein In Overzealous Drug Searches

It should not take federal legislation to ensure that U.S. Customs Service
agents do not single out international travelers based on race, detain them
for days without charges and subject them to humiliating body cavity
searches, shackles and laxatives, all without allowing them access to a
legal representative. Apparently it will.

Widespread allegations of abuse at the hands of its officials prompted the
Customs Service last month to create an independent panel to review the
policies and procedures inspectors use to identify airline passengers who
might be smuggling drugs. Now, U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis, D-Ga., says he is
preparing legislation that would require that travelers be given access to a
lawyer within 24 hours of being detained, that a magistrate approve any
detention beyond 12 hours and that Customs inform travelers of their rights
and search procedures.

The need for such legislation becomes ever more obvious. Travelers, without
charges or lawyers' representation, often have been held for hours or days
at a time and made to undergo humiliating body cavity searches. One woman
delivered her baby prematurely just days after being administered a powerful
laxative and shackled to a hospital bed for two days to be monitored for the
emergence of drugs. None appeared, and her lawsuit is pending.

A jury awarded another woman $450,000 last year in a lawsuit contending
similar abuses by Customs officials. The Customs Service faces at least 12
lawsuits over body searches, including an effort by dozens of black women to
initiate a class-action suit in Chicago alleging they were singled out
because of their race and gender.

National statistics show 43.3 percent of those subjected to body searches or
X-rays last year were black or Hispanic. Yet figures showing drugs were
found on 2.8 percent of Hispanics searched, 6.7 percent of whites and 6.3
percent of blacks, offer no support for disproportionate searches of
minority passengers.

Customs officers at airports and border crossings have leeway to abuse their
authority. They do not need probable cause or warrants to initiate searches.
Officers can force a person to undergo a strip search based on the merest
"reasonable suspicion" that they might be hiding drugs. It is time for
Congress to end the abuse by reining these officials in.