Yet Another NM Resident is Subjected to Invasive Cavity Search

Yet another NM resident has been subjected to invasive medical exams after a detection dog (falsely) alerted for drugs.

This time, the victim was a woman, and this time, the exam was far more invasive.

KOB 4 talked to the woman’s attorney, Laura Schaur Ives, who is the Legal Director for the New Mexico Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union:

Schaur Ives said the woman doesn’t wish to be identified because she considers herself to be a victim of sexual assault. Schaur Ives said the woman crossed the border at a Port of Entry from Juarez, Mexico into El Paso.

A dog alerted to the woman, and Schaur Ives said federal agents stripped searched her at the facility, asked her to undress, to spread her genitalia and to cough. Female agents also allegedly pressed their fingers into her vagina looking for drugs.

The woman claims they didn’t discover anything during the on-site strip search, so they took her to University Medical Center of El Paso.

“First, medical staff observed her making a bowel movement and no drugs were found at that point,” Schaur Ives said. “They then took an X-ray, but it did not reveal any contraband. They then did a cavity search and they probed her vagina and her anus, they described in the medical records as bi-manual–two handed. Finally, they did a cat scan. Again, they found nothing.”

The ACLU claims the federal agents never secured a search warrant before probing or touching the woman.

The woman’s medical records indicate that she denied consent for the exams.

Sexual assault is defined as the penetration of the anal or vaginal area with a foreign object, and forcibly touching an intimate part of another person. The intent need not be sexual gratification for the offender. State-sanctioned sexual assault is about control:

The point of sexual assault is domination and control, asserted by means of the victim’s body. Decades ago, the eminent sociologist Erving Goffman described how body searches are used in prisons and similar institutions to humiliate and degrade inmates through what he called “forced interpersonal contact.” By breaking down a person’s sense of self, compulsory body searches make prisoners easier to control. (source)

The modus operandi of law enforcement seems to be to break us down, abuse us, and control us. Welcome to the United Police States of America.