From Correspondent Patty Davis

CHICAGO (CNN) -- A group of black women have filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Customs Service alleging that they were unfairly targeted for searches at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

The lawsuit alleges that as many as 52 black women were subjected to pat-downs and intrusive searches at the airport when they returned from trips.

The suit seeks to change the Customs Service's non-routine search policy and seeks actual and punitive damages. Ed Fox, the attorney who filed the suit, said none of the searches turned up anything illegal.

"The Customs agents are racially discriminating against blacks and targeting them for being strip-searched. And coupled with that, they are doing body searches, body cavity searches, pat-down strip searches without the appropriate legal cause that they need to undertake a search like that," he said.

Jones

Jacqueline Jones was returning from Germany when Customs agents pulled her aside, checked her bags and ordered a strip search. She said she was taken to a room that looked like a "South American torture chamber."

"I was so afraid I didn't know what they were going to do," she said. "So I go there, I'm standing against the wall, all of a sudden I've got my legs spread, the woman searches me. This is a full body type search -- breast all the way down -- including putting her hand between my legs."

Gwendolyn Richards was returning from Jamaica when Customs officials took her to a hospital in handcuffs.

"I was on the table with my legs in the stirrups, and the doctor checked me out and she basically told me that I was clean," she said.

Customs officials acknowledge that the searches were conducted but deny that race has anything to do with who they choose to search.

"We do have the legal right to do what we do," said Irene Prince of the Customs Service. "The good guys sometimes get caught up with the bad guys. And I wish that people would understand that we're here trying to do a job."

That is little comfort for Richards.

"You can never give me enough to compensate for what I feel in here," she said, pointing to her chest.

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