Black Woman Gets $350,000 Settlement for Airport Strip Search - Miami Airport

Posted on Mon, Nov. 10, 2003

Black Woman Gets $350,000 Settlement for Airport Strip Search
CATHERINE WILSON
Associated Press

MIAMI - The federal government has agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a
lawsuit by a Houston woman who says she was singled out for a strip search
by Miami airport agents because she is black.

Rhonda Brent's search and dozens of others prompted changes in federal law
and policies based on claims that customs inspectors made it a national
practice to single out minority women for unjustified, humiliating
searches in the 1990s.

"She is relieved that it's over, and she in her way is also glad to know
that other people can benefit from what she did to stand up for their
rights," Brent's attorney, L. Obii Aham-Neze, said Monday. "This was one
of the cases that forced the Customs Service to change their practices."

The Justice Department agreed to settle the suit without an admission of
wrongdoing two years after Brent won an appeal that found she was
subjected to an unconstitutional strip search and X-ray exam.

Despite the denial of liability, Aham-Neze said, "You wouldn't be paying
$350,000 for not doing anything wrong, that's for sure."

Calls for comment to the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement were not immediately returned.

Complaints and lawsuits claiming abusive strip searches in California,
Florida, Illinois and Texas generated congressional inquiries and a
Treasury Department investigation.

In Brent's case, she said she met a Nigerian man, the only other black
person on a Rome-Miami flight, on her way home from vacation in 1991. On
arrival, Brent shook her head in disapproval as the man was pulled aside
for a luggage search.

A customs inspector ordered Brent to be detained "based on this look and
gesture," the appeals court said in its review of the case.

She said she was held for 10 hours and denied an attorney while she was
patted down, strip searched and taken to a hospital for X-rays. No drugs
were uncovered on her or in her luggage.

"They just wanted to teach her a lesson," Aham-Neze said.

Under revised rules, agents must have individual, reasonable and objective
reasons for ordering strip searches. General suspect profiles and
subjective hunches are not legal grounds.

The lawsuit was so old that the original judge died while it was pending.
A second judge accepted the settlement and closed the case Oct. 30.


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