Aggressive search of Muslim woman at LAX

Examples of head scarves (hijabs)

Lubana Adi, an American immigrant whose family is from Hama, Syria, speaks out today on the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times.  

"My phone was searched at LAX" is the title of her piece.

She became an American citizen in 1999, but in 2017 she was subjected twice to "an aggressive body search."

Apparently the 4th Amendment does not apply to Muslim-American citizens or to any woman who wears a headscarf.

"The first body-searcher reached between my legs and groped under my hijab [head scarf]," she reports.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-adi-fourth-amendment-airport-cellphone-search-20170407-story.html

Thank you to the LA Times and to members of the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana for enabling her to speak out.  

She quotes the 4th Amendment to the Constitution as proof that she was wrongly searched.  It guarantees the "right of persons to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

There's some kind of "border search exemption" so that custom officials don't have to show probable cause before searching.  The practice of "detaining" cell phones began under George W. Bush but has "exploded in 2017," she says.  More phones were search in February alone than in all of 2015.

Under this president, the rights of Muslims and women are eroding.  

Heaven help anyone who is both Muslim and a woman.

Church of the Messiah did the right thing--the thing Jesus would have done, as he describes in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25.