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ACLU: Customs Service targets black women in airport strip-searches
 | LEGAL RESOURCES |
| Latest Legal News | |
Law Library | |
NEWARK, New Jersey (CNN) -- The American Civil Liberties Union Friday filed suit Friday, accusing accused the U.S. Customs Service of singling out black women for invasive searches at airport security checks.
The ACLU sued on behalf of Yvette Bradley, 33, an advertising executive who said she was subjected to a pat down and had her genitals touched and probed by agents after she was stopped at a security point at Newark Airport upon her return from a vacation in Jamaica in April 1999.
Bradley, who works for filmmaker Spike Lee and DDB Needham Advertising, said only black women from her flight were stopped and searched. "They rubbed their hands all over us. They strip-searched us. They probed their fingers into our bodies," she said.
Pat Jones, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service, declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the agency had undergone numerous reforms to address the issue of racial profiling and to ensure that travelers are not unnecessarily hassled.
"This is an issue that we became aware of a year and a half ago and the agency has taken numerous steps, we've done a lot to change the way people might become subject to a search of any kind," said Jones.
A March report by the General Accounting Office found that black women were nine times more likely than white women to be x-rayed after being physically searched yet were less than half as likely as white women to be found carrying contraband. Bills are pending in both houses of Congress that would bar federal agents from using race as a criteria for conducting searches.
The ACLU asked federal court in Newark to compel the customs service to set new standards for conducting searches, to enjoin the agency from targeting black women and to pay a $500,000 in damages to Bradley.
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