DEA Ends Airport Gate Searches After Years of Documented Abuses of Civil Asset Forfeiture
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is ending searches of passengers at airports and other mass transit hubs after years of investigations by government watchdogs, civil liberties groups, and media outlets documenting how agents seized legal cash from innocent American travelers.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram announced in a memo last week that the agency was scrapping its Transportation Interdiction Program (TIP) and reassigning agents, citing an internal review that found the program was outdated and resulted in few arrests. The Justice Department temporarily suspended the program in November after an Inspector General report outlined the significant risk of constitutional violations and litigation created by so-called “consensual encounter” searches by DEA agents at airports.
Milgram wrote in her memo that the results of the internal DEA review, which was launched following the Inspector General report, made it “clear that the TIP is not an effective way to utilize our limited resources.” According to the memo, between 2022 and 2024, DEA agents participating in TIP seized $22 million in suspected drug proceeds but only arrested 57 suspects. Modern cartels are increasingly laundering their illicit proceeds through cryptocurrency rather than smuggling hard cash through airports, Milgram wrote. Meanwhile, Milgram said the DEA’s more sophisticated investigations into criminal networks over the same period netted $1.4 billion and “thousands” of arrests.
However, Milgram’s memo barely mentions the most important reason for ending its airport searches: the abuse of American travelers’ constitutional rights.
The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public-interest law firm, is currently litigating a class-action lawsuit alleging the DEA and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) violate travelers’ Fourth Amendment rights by seizing their money without probable cause simply if the dollar amount is greater than $5,000.
Dan Alban, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, said in a press release that ending the searches “will help protect the rights of travelers from the abuses so many have suffered while flying. TIP encouraged DEA agents to prey on people who were flying with cash, even though doing so is perfectly legal.”
The Justice Department Inspector General began investigating the TIP in 2024 following I.J.’s release of a video taken by an airline passenger who was detained and had his bags searched by the DEA at th
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