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Over the Line: Innocent Woman Suing Border Patrol Over Full Cavity Search

© Flickr / Maryland National GuardU.S. Border Patrol agent
U.S. Border Patrol agent - Sputnik International
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An Arizona woman who was billed after being subjected to a humiliating full body cavity search by border patrol has now filed a lawsuit against the agency.

Immigrants who have been caught crossing the border illegally are housed inside the McAllen Border Patrol Station in McAllen, Texas, where they are processed on July 15, 2014 - Sputnik International
US Border Patrol Taking Away Undocumented Mexican Migrants Belongings
After a short trip to Mexico, Ashley Cervantes, who was 19 at the time, was detained by Customs and Border Protection for eight hours as they falsely accused her of smuggling drugs across the border inside her body. She was given no explanation for their suspicions.

"We believe they used at least two different K9s on her for the purpose of trying to get them to alert.  We don't know why they used two.  Did the first one not alert and were they fishing for one that would? Or did the first one alert and there were looking for a second one to corroborate it?" Brian Marchetti, Cervantes’ lawyer, told local station KGUN.

Cervantes alleges that after the K9’s were brought out, she was patted down, handcuffed, and told she was being taken to the hospital for an X-ray. 

Police officers are illuminated by patrol car lights during a protest against the acquittal of Michael Brelo, a patrolman charged in the shooting deaths of two unarmed suspects. - Sputnik International
Texas Woman: Cops Conducted Body Cavity Search in Gas Station Parking Lot
However, when she got to the hospital she was probed by a male physician.

“A male physician enters the room, asks her a few questions, we believe, and proceeds to conduct a full body cavity search on the vaginal and rectal cavities and young Ashley who was nineteen at the time had not yet in her life been to a  gynecologist and her first ever pelvic exams were conducted in that setting,” Marchetti said.

The doctor confirmed that Cervantes had no drugs inside of her body following the intrusive search, and eventually she was released. Her parents were then mailed a bill for $575. 

Cervantes had the option of suing the agency anonymously, but chose to speak out publicly on the issue in hopes that maybe she can prevent what she went through from happening to someone else.

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