The 21-year-old, a business arts major at Lehman College in the Bronx, had stopped there for a connecting flight when airport customs officers told her to take off a waist compression device she was wearing after having surgery.

Though she said the officers had directed unfriendly stares at her and seemingly laughed at the appearance of her surgical wounds, Polanco gently tapped one of the women on the arm to ask for help putting the cumbersome trainer back on, said a news release from Detained in Dubai, an organization that provides legal assistance to foreigners in the United Arab Emirates.

The leader of Detained in Dubai, Radha Stirling, said she suspected the purpose of the appeal was to use the prospect of a potentially harsher punishment to bully Polanco into paying them through an out-of-court settlement.

Despite the news Tuesday from Polanco, Detained in Dubai called on the US state department to revise its travel warnings “to include the risk of false allegations and extortion scams”.

In a separate high-profile case in 2017, a Briton named Jamie Harron received a three-month jail sentence for touching a man’s hip while carrying a drink through a crowded bar.

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