David Berkowitz, better known as “Son of Sam,” killed because Harvey, his neighbor Sam’s dog, commanded him to do so.  He was, of course, a homicidal psycho. For people who are not, taking your marching orders from dogs is generally frowned upon, unless you work for the government in law enforcement.

A New Mexico woman has reached a $475,000 settlement with the Customs and Border Protection agency after she had claimed she was subjected to six hours of illegal cavity searches.

Contrary to whomever decided that the word “claimed” was a good choice of verbs, there is no question that she was subjected to six hours of illegal cavity searches, and other sundry wrongs. Vaginal. Rectal. You name it.  On top of the rather piddling settlement with Customs, she settled with the hospital that was all too happy to rape her as well.

The woman settled her case against the University Medical Center of El Paso, who conducted the search on behalf of CBP, for $1.1 million in 2014.

And what started this journey down the woman’s bodily orifices?

The incident took place in 2012 at the Cordova Port of Entry after a drug-sniffing dog jumped on her.

Still, CBP did not admit any wrongdoing in the case.

A dog. One of those mythical, beloved drug sniffing dogs. It “jumped on her.” Well, there ya go. Rape away.

The victim was represented by the ACLU of Texas and New Mexico, which gave the details.

The ordeal began when a drug-sniffing dog allegedly “alerted” on the ACLU’s client as she attempted to return from Mexico to her home in the U.S. Agents subjected her to a strip search at the border station, examining her genitals and anus with a flashlight. No contraband was found. The agents nevertheless transported Ms. Doe to University Medical Center, where over the course of six hours she suffered an observed bowel movement, an X-ray, a speculum exam of her vagina, a bimanual vaginal and rectal exam, and a CT scan. These procedures were conducted without Ms. Doe’s consent or a search warrant.

But CBP, ever self-protective, played the ace up its sleeve after finding nothing.

Having found no contraband, CBP agents offered Ms. Doe a choice to either sign a medical consent form or be billed for the cost of the searches. Ms. Doe refused to sign, and was later billed $5,488.51.

To her great credit, Ms. Doe refused to be manipulated. What are the chances the hospital, upon her failure to pay, sent the bill to a collections agency, which then hounded her and destroyed her credit, in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act? And to their credit, the ACLU took up her cause.

Not only did the settlement involve money to the victim, but a requirement that CBP agents be trained not to rape women.

In addition to the financial award, the settlement requires CBP to undertake additional training for hundreds of line officers and supervisors. There are currently tens of thousands of federal agents deployed to the Southwest border and calls by some lawmakers to swell the ranks further.

The ACLU has also sent out a letter to hospitals explaining the duties and liabilities of cooperating with law enforcement in the commission of medical rape.

As a general matter, absent consent, the Constitution demands that government officials have a warrant supported by probable cause to search an individual. While courts may afford somewhat more latitude on searches within border regions, all such searches are still bound by constitutional limits. Some searches are so invasive that they are constitutionally prohibited even with a warrant based on probable cause. Searches that intrude on a person’s body require a high degree of justification, even at the border: “In a civilized society, one’s anatomy is draped with constitutional protections. The fourth amendment does not permit us to give border agents a freer hand or a more probing eye.” Except in very rare instances, government searches that intrude into the human body require a warrant because “[s]uch an invasion of bodily integrity implicates an individual’s ‘most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy.’” The protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment extend to searches conducted by medical personnel who are acting at the request or direction of law enforcement officers.

It all sounds so very official, explaining to hospitals that it’s not okay for their docs to rape because a border guard told them to. Of course, that doesn’t address those docs who are only too happy to work alongside law enforcement because they really like bimanual rectal exams or to be near guys with guns, helping to save the children from the plague of drugs.

Your staff should know that CBP agents have no authority to compel healthcare professionals to assist in law enforcement searches.

Compel?  No. But if they want to, well. And in this case, the two doctors involved, Michael Parsa and Christopher Cabanillas, were more than cooperative with the CBP agents. They didn’t have to be asked twice.

Yet, there remains a conceptual ledge here that, if you believe in unicorns, prevents the slide down the slippery slope to universal border rapes whenever a dog commands.  It’s a warrant.  If a neutral magistrate issues a warrant authorizing the search, then all the creepy, rape-y, outrageous things magically go away. because a judge said, “go and rape with my blessing.”

Remember that dog commandment?  The dog jumped on her. The dog “alerted,” which is the way to make it sound more official and less playful.  And if a dog alerts, even if it will alert whenever its handler wants it to alert, or is wrong 58% of the time when it alerts, the mere claim that it alerted constitutes probable cause under the law. It’s not that judges don’t know that drug dogs are about as reliable as divining rods, but that puppies are cute and judges just love them.

Had the CBP agents not been so full of their almighty power to rape, and instead called a magistrate judge for a telephone warrant based upon the dog alert, there is essentially no chance the warrant would have been refused. After all, dogs are dogs, and if you can’t trust coin tosses dogs, then who will you take commands from?

Had the agents not been so taken with their hubris, and had the docs not been so thrilled to play their digital role in crime fighting, they would have obtained a warrant without breaking a sweat. And then no rape, not vaginal, not rectal, not technological, nothing, would have occurred.  All because of a dog.