Court Opinion

ID: 9487385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:15:07.959526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:14.210694
License: Public Domain

D.W. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
To sit in a room, monitored by customs inspectors or medical staff, knowing that one is not free to leave until one produces a bowel movement, is unquestionably a degrading and humiliating experience. As the majority acknowledges, the Supreme Court has held that border officials may detain a traveler for a monitored bowel movement search only when, at the inception of the detention for the search, they have “ ‘a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person’ of alimentary canal smuggling.” United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 541, 105 S.Ct. 3304, 3311, 87 L.Ed.2d 381 (1985) (internal citation omitted); see also id. at 540, 105 S.Ct. at 3309 (stating that border officials must have “particularized suspicion that the evidence sought might be found within the body of the individual”) (emphasis added). Because I believe that the decision by the majority threatens to eviscerate this requirement, significantly increasing the likelihood that innocent travelers seeking entry or re-entry to the country will be subjected to the degradation of such a search, I dissent.
I.
The majority opinion expands Ninth Circuit law in two significant and unwarranted respects. First, the majority appears to read Montoya de Hernandez broadly for the proposition that evidence merely giving rise to a suspicion that a traveler might be engaged in some form of illicit activity is sufficient to justify subjecting the traveler to a monitored bowel movement search. Second, the majority embraces the government’s theory that, even if the evidence possessed by border officials in this case at the outset of the detention was not sufficient to justify the monitored bowel movement search, the very failure of the initial strip search to detect the presence of lubricant residue, reinforced undergarments, or other evidence indicative of alimentary canal smuggling provided the additional quantum of “particularized” evidence necessary to justify the monitored bowel movement search. I disagree with both propositions.
The majority first holds that the evidence that Gonzalez-Rineon had traveled from a narcotics “source city,” had paid cash for her ticket, and carried only one piece of luggage, together with Gonzalez-Rineon’s apparent dishonesty during questioning, justified not only the partial strip search but also the lengthy detention for the monitored bowel movement search. This ruling represents an unwarranted and, in this circuit at least, unprecedented extension of Montoya de Hernandez. Although I agree that, under Montoya de Hernandez, the officials had sufficient cause for suspicion at the outset of the detention to conduct the partial strip search, they did not have a “particularized and objective basis for suspecting [Gonzalez-Rineon] of alimentary canal smuggling.” At the time the border officials detained Gonzalez-Rin-con for the monitored bowel movement search, the officials had not found a single piece of evidence in any way indicative of such smuggling. As explained below, this fact distinguishes the present case both from Montoya de Hernandez and all previous cases decided subsequent to Montoya de Hernandez in this circuit.
It is well-established that, all else equal, the greater the indignity or invasion of privacy occasioned by a search, the greater the quantum of evidence necessary to justify the search. In Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), a case involving the propriety of a visual body-cavity search policy at a pretrial detention facility, the Supreme Court explained:
The test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application. *869In each case, it requires a balancing of the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails. Courts must consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.
Id. at 559, 99 S.Ct. at 1884. See also Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 537, 105 S.Ct. at 3308 (“What is reasonable depends upon all of the circumstances surrounding the search or seizure and the nature of the search or seizure itself.”) (citing New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 327-42, 105 S.Ct. 733, 735-43, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985)). Although the majority is correct to point out that, at the border, “the Fourth Amendment balance between the government’s interests and the traveler’s privacy rights is ‘struck much more favorably to the Government,’ ” supra at 864 (quoting Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 539-40, 105 S.Ct. at 3309-10), Fourth Amendment principles continue to apply. See 473 U.S. at 539, 105 S.Ct. at 3309 (“Having presented herself at the border for admission, and having subjected herself to the criminal enforcement powers of the Federal Government, 19 U.S.C. § 482, respondent was entitled to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”); See also United States v. Lamela, 942 F.2d 100, 102 (1st Cir.1991) (holding that customs officials’ discovery during patdown search of “conspicuous bulge” from girdle justified a more intrusive strip search, and noting that “what constitutes ‘reasonable suspicion’ to justify a particular search may not suffice to justify a more intrusive or demeaning search”) (internal citations omitted); Adedeji v. United States, 782 F.Supp. 688, 693-94 (D.Mass.1992) (“The level of suspicion [required to justify a search] necessarily depends upon the intrusiveness of the search contemplated. The law here is well settled. ‘What is required to be balanced in any particular case is the level of suspicion of the agent against the level of indignity perpetrated upon the traveler.’”) (quoting United States v. Brown, 499 F.2d 829, 833 (7th Cir.1974)). But see Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 541 n. 4, 105 S.Ct. at 3310 n. 4 (declining to specify the level of suspicion necessary for progressively more intrusive searches at the border).
The facts of Montoya de Hernandez are instructive. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that evidence that the defendant had traveled from a narcotics “source city,” had paid for her ticket in cash, and had little clothing, together with the defendant’s nervousness and evasiveness during questioning, provided a sufficient basis for a detention beyond the scope of a routine customs search and inspection. 473 U.S. at 542, 105 S.Ct. at 3311. Prior to determining that the suspect should be subjected to a monitored bowel movement search, however, the inspectors conducted a strip search which uncovered particularized evidence sufficient to justify the more intrusive and more humiliating search. As the Court explained, “During the [patdown and strip search] the female inspector felt respondent’s abdomen area and noticed a firm fullness, as if respondent were wearing a girdle. The search revealed no contraband, but the inspector noticed that respondent was wearing two pairs of elastic underpants with a paper towel lining the crotch area.” Id. at 534, 105 S.Ct. at 3307. This latter evidence provided a “particularized” basis for the officials’ suspicion that the detainee was engaged in alimentary canal smuggling.
I have found no case in this circuit in which a monitored bowel movement search at the border was upheld absent particularized evidence directly linking the traveler to possible alimentary canal smuggling, whether that evidence consisted of materials known to be “commonly used by individuals transporting substances in body cavities,” United States v. Handy, 788 F.2d 1419, 1420 (9th Cir.1986), or observations of the detainee’s physical discomfort or abnormal posture and gait, see id. See generally eases cited by majority at pp. 862-863, supra.
In my view, the majority’s expansive reading of Montoya de Hernandez threatens to replace the Supreme Court’s requirement that border officials have a “particularized ... basis for suspecting alimentary canal smuggling” before they order a monitored bowel movement search with a substantially watered-down requirement that border offi*870cials have grounds for suspicion of some form of illicit activity. Although drug courier profile evidence and apparent dishonesty may provide a reason to conduct a strip search or turn someone away at the border,1 such evidence is not sufficiently particularized to justify subjecting a traveler to a humiliating monitored bowel movement search.
The majority’s alternative ruling that the very failure of the strip search to uncover evidence indicative of alimentary canal smuggling itself provided the additional quantum of “particularized” evidence necessary to justify the more humiliating search, is even more misguided. The majority’s reasoning appears to be that because the inspectors’ initial suspicion was well-founded, their failure to find drugs in one place made it reasonable to search in another. This argument, however, presumes that the initial search was justified by probable cause, or some higher degree of informed suspicion than the suspicion that at the outset justified the partial strip search. The government should not be able to bootstrap — where a patdown or strip search reveals no particularized evidence tending to indicate alimentary canal smuggling, the evidence that originally created a reasonable suspicion that the suspect was carrying drugs must also be sufficient to create a reasonable suspicion that she was smuggling drugs in her alimentary canal. Here, the evidence that initially led inspectors to detain Gonzalez-Rincon consisted solely of drug courier profile evidence together with her nervousness and seeming dishonesty during questioning. This evidence clearly did not provide a “particularized and objective basis” for suspecting Gonzalez-Rin-con of alimentary canal smuggling.
There is nothing wrong with customs inspectors moving from a less intrusive to a more intrusive search technique as long as the inspectors have reasonable grounds to justify the greater intrusion. Where the evidence at the outset of the detention gives rise to a generalized suspicion that the traveler might be engaged in illicit activity, but none of that evidence is indicative of alimentary canal smuggling, the government should not be allowed to use the negative results from a strip search to justify the necessarily more degrading monitored bowel movement search. This court has not previously endorsed such an approach, and doing so here opens the door for customs investigators to order lengthy detentions for monitored bowel movements whenever a suspect merely fits a profile and appears to be nervous or purposely evasive during questioning.
II.
Although the majority properly makes reference to the importance of providing law enforcement officials with the tools to combat narcotics trafficking, and the difficulties of detecting alimentary canal smuggling at the border, it fails to pay sufficient heed to the principle noted by Justice Brennan in his dissent in Montoya de Hernandez: “The standards we fashion to govern ferreting out of the guilty apply equally to the detention of *871the innocent, and ‘may be exercised by the most unfit and ruthless officers as well as by the fit and responsible.’” 473 U.S. at 548, 105 S.Ct. at 3314 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 182, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 1314, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949) (Jackson, J., dissenting)). Neither party to the present appeal provided the court with recent statistics on the subject, but the evidence that we do have suggests that many innocent travelers have been and will continue to be subjected to the kind of degrading search at issue in this appeal. See id. at 557, 105 S.Ct. at 3319 (noting that an early study suggested that “only 16 percent of women subjected to body-cavity searches at the border were in fact found to be carrying contraband,” and that a physician who conducted many internal searches at the border reported finding contraband in only 15 to 20 percent of the individuals he examined).
The implicit justification for adopting a rule authorizing monitored bowel movement searches on facts such as those present in this case appears to be that alimentary canal smuggling has reached such a high degree of sophistication that, in many cases, smugglers will be able to endure customs searches, pat-downs and strip searches without border officials uncovering a single piece of evidence to ground their suspicion that the traveler is engaged in alimentary canal smuggling. In my view, before endorsing the expanded use of such degrading searches on such slender evidence, we should at a minimum require the government to come forward with statistical evidence demonstrating that the government’s interest in effective enforcement of the drug laws necessitates the potentially far-reaching rule articulated by the majority. The government has presented no such evidence.
Under the standard articulated by the majority, petty government officials will be able to order monitored bowel movement searches on the basis of often unreliable drug courier profile evidence, cf. United States v. Lui, 941 F.2d 844, 847 (9th Cir.1991) (noting that this court has “denounced the use of drug courier profile evidence as substantive evidence of a defendant’s innocence or guilt”), as long as the profile evidence is accompanied by some evidence of nervousness and self-contradictory statements or seeming evasiveness on the part of the traveler. Where the traveler is innocent, of course, it is not unlikely that, under questioning, the traveler will become nervous and provide inconsistent responses. If customs officials choose to apply the majority’s standard aggressively, the lines of travelers seeking entrance to the United States who are diverted for lengthy and humiliating monitored bowel movement searches will surely grow long. Many of these travelers will be innocent. Because neither precedent nor our legitimate concern with intercepting drug traffickers justifies such a result, I respectfully dissent.

. Significantly, the border officials who detained Gonzalez-Rincon did not offer her the option of leaving the country on the next available flight. Cf. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 534, 105 S.Ct. at 3306 (noting that the customs inspector made such an offer, and only detained Montoya de Hernandez for the monitored bowel movement search after determining that no such flights were available). As Justice Brennan noted in his dissent, when the requirement that travelers "excrete their bodily wastes for further scrutiny," id. at 563, 105 S.Ct. at 3322, is not merely a possible condition of entry to the country, but a basis for incommunicado detention and possible criminal sanctions, we risk creating "an authoritarian twilight zone on the border.” Id. at 564, 105 S.Ct. at 3323. Justice Brennan put the matter starkly but accurately: "The suspicious-looking traveler may not enter the country. Nor may he leave. Instead, he is trapped on the border. Because he is on American soil, he is fully subject 'to the criminal enforcement powers of the Federal Government.’ But notwithstanding that he is on American soil, he is not fully protected by the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable everywhere else in the country.... Nothing in the underlying premises of the 'border exception' supports such a ring of unbridled authoritarianism surrounding freedom’s soil.” Id. at 564-65, 105 S.Ct. at 3323 (internal citation omitted). See also id. at 554, 105 S.Ct. at 3317 (emphasizing that “while the power of Congress to authorize wide-ranging detentions and searches for purposes of immigration and customs control is unquestioned, the Court previously has emphasized that far different considerations apply when detentions and searches are carried out for purposes of investigating suspected criminal activity ”).