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As she went through, the immigration official turned and nodded silently at a man who stood in the corridor the passengers were now taking toward the customs hall. The man nodded back and wandered after the young woman.
It was a heavy day for traffic, and the luggage was delayed by an extra twenty minutes. Eventually, the carousel gurgled, thumped into life, and suitcases began to spew onto the moving band. Her own case was neither first nor last but somewhere in the middle. She saw it tumble from the open mouth of the tunnel and recognized the bright yellow tag that she had affixed to help her pick it out.
It was a hard frame with wheels, so she slung her tote bag over her left shoulder and towed the valise toward the green channel. She was halfway through when one of the customs officers, as if standing idly by, beckoned to her. A spot check. Nothing to worry about. Domingo would be waiting for her in the concourse beyond the doors. He would have to wait a few minutes longer.
She pulled her case toward the table the officer indicated and lifted it. The latches were facing toward her.
“Would you please open your case, ma’am?” Scrupulously polite. They were always scrupulously polite, and they never smiled or joked. She unflicked the two catches. The officer turned the case around toward himself and lifted the lid. He saw the clothes ranged on top, and, with gloved hands, lifted off the top layer. Then he stopped. She realized he was staring at her over the top of the lid. She presumed he would now close it and nod that she could leave.
He closed it, and said very coldly, “Would you come with me, if you please, ma’am.”
It was not a question. She became aware that a big man and a burly woman, also in the same uniforms, were standing close behind her. It was embarrassing; other passengers were staring sideways as they scuttled through.
The first officer snapped the catches closed, hefted the case and went ahead. The others, without a word spoken, came up behind. The first officer led them through a door in the corner. It was quite a bare room, with a table at the center, a few plain chairs against the walls. No pictures, two cameras in different corners. The valise went flat on the table.
“Would you please open your valise again, ma’am?”
It was the first inkling Letizia Arenal had that something might be wrong, but she had not a clue what it might be. She opened her case, saw her own neatly folded clothes.
“Would you take them out, please, ma’am?”
It was underneath the linen jacket, the two cotton skirts and the several folded blouses. Not large, about the size of a one-kilo bag of grocery-store sugar. Filled with what looked like talc. Then it hit her; like a wave of fainting nausea, a punch in the solar plexus, a silent voice in the head screaming:
No, it is not me, I did not do this, it is not mine, someone must have placed it there . . .
It was the burly woman who sustained her, but not out of any spirit of sympathy. For the cameras. So obsessional are the New York courts with the rights of the accused, and so keen are defense attorneys to pounce upon the tiniest infraction of the rules of procedure to procure a dismissal of a charge, that, from officialdom’s point of view, not even the smallest formality may be ignored.
After the opening of the suitcase and the discovery of what at that point was simply unidentified white powder, Letizia Arenal went, in the official phrase, “into the system.” Later it all seemed a single nightmarish blur.
She was taken to another, better-appointed room in the terminal complex. There was a bank of digital recorders. Other men came. She did not know, but they were from the DEA and the ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With U.S. customs, that made three authorities detaining her under different jurisdictions.
Although her English was good, a Spanish-speaking interpreter arrived. She was read her rights, the Miranda rights, of which she had never heard. At every sentence, she was asked, “Do you understand, ma’am?” Always the polite “ma’am,” although their expressions told her they despised her.
Somewhere, her passport was being minutely examined. Elsewhere, her suitcase and shoulder bag received the same attention. The bag of white powder was sent for analysis, which would happen outside the building at another facility, a chemical lab. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be pure cocaine.
The fact that it was pure was important. A small quantity of “cut” powder might be explained as “personal use.” Not a kilo of pure.
In the presence of two women, she was required to remove every stitch of clothing, which was taken away. She was given a sort of paper coverall to wear. A qualified doctor, female, carried out an invasive body search into orifices, ears included. By now, she was sobbing uncontrollably. But the “system” would have its way. And all on camera, for the record. No smart-ass lawyer was going to get the bitch off this one.
Finally, a senior DEA officer informed her she had the right to ask for a lawyer. She had not been formally interrogated, not yet. Her Miranda rights had not been infringed. She said she knew no New York lawyer. She was told a defense attorney would be appointed, but by the court, not by him.
She repeatedly said her fiancé would be waiting for her outside. This was not ignored, not at all. Whoever was waiting for her might be her accomplice in crime. The crowds in the concourse beyond the doors of the customs hall were thoroughly vetted. No Domingo de Vega was found. Either he was a fiction or, if her accomplice, he had fled the scene. In the morning they would check for a Puerto Rican diplomat of that name at the UN.
She insisted on explaining all, waiving her right to an attorney being present. She told them everything she knew, which was nothing. They did not believe her. Then she had an idea.
“I am a Colombian. I want to see someone from the Colombian Embassy.”
“It will be the consulate, ma’am. It is now ten at night. We will try to raise someone in the morning.”
This was from the FBI man, though she did not know it. Drug smuggling into the USA is a federal, not state, offense. The Feds had taken over.
JFK Airport comes under the East District of New York, the EDNY, and is in the borough of Brooklyn. Finally, close to midnight, Letizia Arenal was lodged in that borough’s federal correctional institution, pending a magistrate’s hearing in the morning.
And of course a file was opened, which rapidly became thicker and thicker. The system needs a lot of paperwork. In her single, stiffling cell, odorous of sweat and fear, Letizia Arenal cried the night away.
In the morning, the Feds contacted someone at the Colombian Consulate, who agreed to come. If the prisoner expected some sympathy there, she was to be disappointed. The consular assistant could hardly have been more hatchet-faced. This was exactly the sort of thing the diplomats loathed.
The assistant was a woman in a severe black business suit. She listened without a flicker of expression to the explanation and believed not a word of it. But she had no choice but to agree to contact Bogotá and ask the Foreign Ministry there to trace a private lawyer called Julio Luz. It was the only name Ms. Arenal could think of to turn to for help.
