LATEST STRIP-SEARCH COMPLAINT ONE OF MANY

'This Is By No Means Isolated,' Editor Says Of Woman Detained Upon
Return From Jamaica

A 42 year-old Ottawa woman returned home from her grandmother's
funeral to be handcuffed, strip-searched and accused of
drug-smuggling by Canadian customs agents at the Ottawa airport Tuesday night.

Charmaine Archer, a nurse's assistant at a local long-term care
facility, was on a flight from Philadelphia, the last leg of her trip
home from Jamaica. She and her four-year-old son were pulled aside
for inspection by border services agents at the airport as they left
the plane around 11 p.m.

Agents told Archer, a Canadian citizen, that she was flagged because
she paid for part of her ticket with a credit card, because she
booked at the last minute, and because she only stayed for four days.

Agents took what she described as gauze swabs and ran them over her
wallet, the lining of her suitcase and her toothbrush -- a process
that took over an hour, she said.

Her toothbrush, agents said, tested positive for heroin and THC, the
active ingredient in marijuana.

"I said, 'You're a liar.' I don't do drugs, I don't know anybody that
does drugs and I wasn't around drugs when I was in Jamaica ... I come
from an upstanding family and nobody touched that toothbrush but me."

Agents told her she would have to submit to a strip search. "I said
to her, 'No way that's going to happen!' "

Archer was threatened with arrest and was told her child would be
sent to Children's Aid, she said. Her boy was eventually allowed to
join his father, who was waiting to pick him and Archer up in the
airport. Archer was handcuffed and eventually agreed to be searched.

"I got undressed. There were three women in the room -- quite
humiliating, quite degrading. I'm a big person, very conscious of my
body ... you can imagine how I felt." When it was over "they asked if
I wanted to take a minute to sit down," since she was shaking and crying.

They offered to help repack her bag and two male officers put her
bags on a trolley to bring them down to her waiting husband. It was 2
a.m., and they had found no drugs.

"They never apologized, never said anything," she said.

"This is by no means isolated," said Ewart Walters, editor of the
Spectrum, a monthly newspaper aimed at Ottawa's black community.

"There have been enough incidents over the years of people being picked on."

He pointed to Leon Stewart, who was held for three hours at the
airport in March 2000. He was strip-searched, but Stewart was asked
to produce a bowel movement to satisfy customs agents.

"There is an overwhelming number of black people coming from Jamaica
who get stopped and asked questions," Walters said.

Kerwin Dougan, Archer's travel agent with Voyages G Travel in
Gatineau, agreed the destination may play a role in determining which
people are detained for searches, including Jamaica in a list of
countries he says has a reputation for drugs.

Archer has retained legal counsel. "I want to know what my rights
were," she said.

Nobody at the Canadian Border Services Agency could be reached for comment.