By Cyndy Slovak-Barton.
Beware. This story can be rather graphic. That’s what “On The Media” proclaimed before starting the story Saturday morning.
And it certainly was.
But it was worth listening to, because it drove home just how out of control our government – the Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – is at times.
The media has been trying to take a look at what is happening at our borders. But, because it is covered under “Homeland Security,” there is no way to look at policies.
Having travelled to Mexico and toward the border around Laredo, I totally understand that I could be stopped – like everyone else on IH-35 – about 100 miles inside the border. That’s been the policy for years.
But if you get pulled aside – for any reason whatsoever – you no longer have the right to know why you are being stopped or who the agents are. They can hold you for hours – as they did with a four-year-old child recently who was kept from her parents for 20 hours in a cold room without food, without a bed, without being allowed to talk to her parents.
Oh, yes. This child was an American citizen. Needless to say, she now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Another story involved a family returning from a wedding in Canada. The family was held for six hours. Without explanation.
But the most horrific story was about a 54-year-old woman from New Mexico who was forced to endure invasive cavity searches – yes, you read that correctly – after she was pulled aside for a “secondary search”. Why was she pulled aside? Who knows? She wasn’t told.
But when a security dog jumped on her, the CBP suspected her of having drugs. They forced her to strip, searched her in every way you can possibly imagine. When they found nothing, she was given a laxative. When no drugs were subsequently “released,” she was taken to the hospital, handcuffed to a bed, and then was searched by a doctor – women understand exactly how a doctor would search a woman – while the door was open and the woman was viewed in all nakedness and throughout the procedures by residents, officers and nurses.
Again, they found nothing.
Then, to top off the entire experience, the CBP officers put a paper in front of her and told her to sign it, giving them permission for having put her through the agonizing experience.
If she didn’t? She was told that she would be billed by the hospital for the “tests.”
This woman did not sign.
And the hospital billed her for the tests.
This entire experience is wrong in so many ways. It is inexplicable that these officers, these members of our government, would treat people in such a manner and then say, “pay for the experience.”
Needless to say, this 54-year-old suffers in the same way as many rape survivors. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, she can’t be intimate with her husband, she can’t sleep.
Congress is now looking into these and other incidents with the out-of-control CBP.
It’s about time.
