Court Bars Strip Searches of Juvenile Aliens

A federal judge Monday ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to halt strip searches of juveniles in alien detention centers unless there is reason to believe that they are carrying weapons or contraband.

Rejecting the government’s arguments that strip searches are necessary to assure security at the INS’ three detention centers in California, U.S. District Judge Robert Kelleher ruled unconstitutional the agency’s policy requiring strip searches for all new juvenile detainees and youngsters who have had visits from someone other than an attorney.

“Children are especially susceptible to possible traumas from strip searches. . . . It is a time and condition of life when a person may be more susceptible to influence and to psychological damage,” Kelleher wrote in his opinion. “It follows that a nude search of a child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude.”

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy as part of a broader federal lawsuit addressing INS procedures for juvenile immigrants.

“It’s a very significant ruling,” ACLU attorney John Hagar said of the decision, which affects all nine western states within the INS’ western region. “These people aren’t criminals. They’re only being picked up for detention.”

Arguing in support of the policy, Assistant U.S. Atty. Ian Fan presented evidence of a variety of knives, ammunition and other potentially dangerous items recovered during strip searches.

“The sheer magnitude of the number of aliens we’re searching makes it impossible to use a reasonable suspicion standard (for initiating searches),” Fan said. “Now, as a result, I think occasionally we’re going to see weapons and contraband entering INS facilities.”

Government lawyers also argued that restrictive conditions within the Central American countries from which detainees in California most often emigrate lessen most immigrants’ subjective expectations of privacy in such cases.

But Kelleher disagreed.

“It is true that many of these plaintiffs may come from unfortunate situations where their lives and liberties had little protection,” the judge wrote.

“However, they have come to the United States by more than happenstance. Many carry with them the expectation of liberty, opportunity and a better life, the embodiment of which is our Constitution. They have reason to expect its protections.”

The judge also rejected the government’s arguments that juveniles have presented a significant weapons and contraband problem in the past at INS detention facilities in Los Angeles, San Diego and El Centro.

Of 84,000 aliens detained pending deportation proceedings during 1987, “only a handful” were found to be carrying weapons or contraband, the judge said.

Only four of those incidents related to juveniles, and of those, only one item was recovered during a strip search--a broken mirror belonging to a teen-age girl, the judge said. There was no evidence the mirror was intended as a weapon, he added.

But Fan said it appears that at least three of the four weapons and contraband discoveries involving juveniles resulted from strip searches. Moreover, it is “certainly conceivable, and possibly foreseeable” that adults will pass on contraband to juveniles if they know they will not be strip searched, he said.

Kelleher said the INS is free to implement other security measures, including pat-down searches and metal detectors.

Fan said he did not know whether the INS would decide to implement the judge’s ruling at other facilities outside the western region, or whether the government would appeal the ruling.