A 16-year-old girl identified in court filings as C.R. was traveling with her adult sisters on a family trip to Mexico last fall when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents stopped her at the San Ysidro pedestrian port in Southern California. A drug-sniffing dog had alerted to C.R., and the agents demanded she undress, relinquishing even her sanitary pad, and squat "while officers probed and shined a flashlight at her vaginal and anal areas." No drugs were ever found.
C.R.'s family is suing, and they are not the only ones. As The Washington Post reported Sunday, the last seven years have seen at least 11 similarly disturbing lawsuits accusing CBP of grossly invasive searches of women and underage girls at U.S. ports of entry.
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