Yet another woman in New Mexico, Texas has been on the receiving end of intrusive cavity searches lasting for hours, it has been reported.

A 54-year-old New Mexico woman was seized by US border agency staff and subjected to a humiliating a six hour long cavity search and then billed for the sexual assault.

The petite lady who has chosen to remain anonymous reported being ordered to take off her pants and crouch as her anus and vagina were examined with a flashlight and then later probed and examined against her will.

While crossing New Mexico’s El Paso Cordova Bridge on December 8, 2012, the woman’s passport was swiped, and a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer told her she was “randomly” picked for a secondary inspection, where agents Portillo and Herrera frisked her through her clothing.

“One of the agents ran her finger over the woman’s genital area during the frisk,” which left her “humiliated and embarrassed”  the lawsuit said.

Then the woman was told to squat as one of the officers “inserted her finger in the crevice of  buttocks.” The frisk did not show any evidence of contraband or drugs, the lawsuit said.

Then the woman was told to stand in a line with other people as a drug-sniffing dog walked by.

The officer with the dog “hit the ground by her feet, but did not hit the ground by any of the others in the line,” the lawsuit said. “The dog responded by lunging onto the woman and landing its front paws on her torso.”

Although this is not considered a proper signal to indicate a drugs were present, but officers used it to continue the search.

Two Customs and Border Protection agents then seized her and subjected her to the searches – which turned up no drugs.

Without a warrant and against the woman’s will, the agents took the lady to a room, forced her to spread her legs and probed her anus and vagina.

But her ordeal didn’t end there. They then took her to the University Medical Center of El Paso.

The lawsuit reads, “During the car ride to the Medical Center, the lady asked if the agents had a warrant. One of them responded that they did not need a warrant.”

At the centre, a doctor forced a speculum up her vagina to see her insides, stuck his fingers up her vagina while pressing on her abdomen, and put his fingers in her rectum. All of this was done in front of an audience comprising of the officers and medical staff who had come to watch.

She was then handcuffed to an examination table, where she was given a laxative and forced to defecate in a portable toilet in front of both officers.”

After being humiliated and probed in front of agents and medical staff, they then ordered an X-ray of her stomach.

When the X-ray found no drugs, a CT scan was ordered which also came up clear.

ACLU of New Mexico Legal Director Laura Schauer Ives said in the news release: “These extreme and illegal searches deeply traumatized our client.The fact that our government treated an innocent 54-year-old woman with such brutality and inhumanity should outrage all Americans. We must ensure that government agents never put another person through a nightmare like this ever again.”

After all of the invasive searches turned up nothing, both border agency staff and medical personnel tried to trick the woman into signing away her rights and any chance of redress by giving her the option of signing a medical consent form which would then exempt her for paying for her ill-treatment. The other ‘option’ they presented to her was to decline and pay for the medical probing that she didn’t consent to. If she did sign the consent form, then the border patrol said they would pay for the searches.

The woman refused and was then landed with a $5,000 bill. However, it also means that she is now able to sue the agency and medical staff for unreasonable searches.

It is also worth noting that in the US it is illegal for medical staff to conduct these types of searches without either consent or a warrant, and despite what the agents claim, it is illegal.

As a result of her traumatising ordeal, the woman says she is now unable to be intimate with her husband and rarely goes out.

Those who face prosecution now include the El Paso County Hospital District and the board of directors, the University Medical Center of El Paso and the two doctors, Michael Parsa and Christopher Cabanillas. Defendants also include two unidentified border patrol agents.

You can view a copy of the lawsuit here.

But this is not the only cavity search that has resulted from a drugs sniffer dog making a false positive on an innocent traveller.

In November it was reported that one man was subjected to a humiliating 14 hour cavity search after being stopped by police in New mexico for skipping a stop sign at Walmart.

After being stopped, the officer called in a K-9 unit in which a sniffer dog falsely gave a false positive. Despite the fact that the search turned up no drugs in the car the man was detained in police custody. Officers then obtained a warrant to get a cavity search and drove him to the nearest medical centre. The doctors at that centre refused to carry out what in their words was an unethical search and the officers then drove the man across state lines to Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City where doctors performed the anal probes, despite an initial X-Ray turning up no drugs.

The man was then subject to forced surgery, enemas, repeated anal probes and forced to defecate in front of officers who according to claims made in the court documents, were making lewd comments during his ordeal.

After it was done, to add insult to injury, the hospital that performed all the procedures against his will even billed him for $6,000- and threatened to hire a collections agency if he didn’t pay.

Deming Police Officers Bobby Orosco and Robert Chavez were the ones who apprehended the victim.

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