After the department’s internal watchdog expressed concerns that the long-standing practice of the Drug Enforcement Administration searching travelers at airports and confiscating their cash was encouraging widespread civil rights violations and possibly racial profiling, the Justice Department ordered the agency to halt the practice.
The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said in a management directive released Thursday that it had been receiving complaints regarding the searches for years and had recently discovered fresh evidence indicating serious issues with them, including possible constitutional violations.
According to the IG, the program significantly increases the likelihood that DEA Task Force Officers and Special Agents will carry out these tasks incorrectly, place undue burdens on innocent travelers, and violate their legal rights. Additionally, it was discovered that the searches waste police resources on ineffectual interdiction efforts.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco responded by directing that the searches be halted while an internal review is conducted.
Although it chose not to comment, the DEA agreed with the majority of the report’s recommendations.
The inspector general discovered that DEA officers and their local law enforcement partners have been stopping travelers at airports based only on the fact that they purchased a ticket at the last minute and requesting to search their bags without a warrant.
According to the report, even though the searches are meant to be optional, the timing of the operations constituted a de facto threat because passengers could miss their flights if they refused to consent to a search. If the agents discovered cash, they took it using civil forfeiture, a legal procedure that requires the traveler to demonstrate that the money had nothing to do with drugs in order to regain it.
Because the DEA only gathers information on situations in which money is taken, the IG stated that investigators were unable to draw any judgments regarding whether the searches contained racial profiling.
According to the report, the DEA gathered information on consensual encounters in specific mass transit facilities between 2000 and 2003 as part of a Department pilot project to investigate the use of race in law enforcement operations. The Department has long been concerned and has received complaints regarding possible racial profiling in relation to cold consent encounters in transportation settings.
However, the Justice Department and the DEA did not draw any conclusions from the data regarding the objectivity of the consensual encounters. The report stated that the DEA stopped collecting data in 2003, but its consensual encounter activities persisted.
A search in Cincinnati
The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm that is challenging the DEA in a class action lawsuit, released a video of the incident four months ago, which was featured in the IG report.
The traveler filmed himself telling a DEA agent that he did not agree to have his bags searched while he was in the Cincinnati airport on his way to New York. The agent used what the institute referred to be unlawful bullying methods in response, stating that his consent was not necessary. Over 2.6 million people have watched the video.
The agent was heard adding, “You don’t have to consent.” We receive notifications when you purchase a last-minute ticket. We have a lot of cash and narcotics traveling to New York from every airport.
After missing his aircraft, the man eventually consented to the search. There was nothing unlawful discovered.
An airline employee provided the names of individuals who had booked flights 48 hours before to departure, which the IG discovered was the basis for the search.
The IG discovered that the employee had received tens of thousands of dollars over a number of years and that the DEA was paying him a portion of the money that was seized. Investigators came to the conclusion that that setup is worrisome.
Lawsuit alleges rights violations
The DEA and Transportation Security Administration were sued in January 2020 in a class action lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice, which claimed that the authorities frequently violated the constitutional rights of airport passengers by seizing their money without a warrant.
Judges have ordered the government to refund money that the DEA has confiscated in some instances. According to an NBC News story from 2021, the DEA confiscated $30,000 in cash from a jobless New Orleans shoeshiner who was traveling via the Columbus, Ohio, airport after his vehicle purchase went through. After the Institute for Justice intervened, prosecutors eventually consented to refund the funds.
The DEA confiscated $82,000 from an elderly man and his daughter in Pittsburgh in 2020, according to an NBC Los Angeles investigation.
According to the daughter, the government embezzled my dad’s life savings. I feel as though I was robbed in the street.
According to a 2016 USA TODAY article, the DEA confiscated more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 individuals at 15 major airports over a ten-year period.
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