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Transportation Interdiction Program (TIP) and reassigning agents, citing an internal review that found the program was outdated and resulted in few arrests.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 the airport. 

The passenger, identified only as David C., had already passed through a TSA checkpoint and was boarding his flight when he was approached by a DEA officer who demanded to search his carry-on.

"I don't care about your consent stuff," the agent told David repeatedly after he said he did not consent to a search. David's travel schedule was flagged by an airline employee who was a paid DEA informant. The agent found nothing in David's baggage, and David missed his flight.

Furthermore, the DEA agent never logged the search, even though DEA policy requires all such "consensual encounters" to be documented.  

"Without the subject, the individual, thinking to immediately use their cell phone to record the event," Inspector General Michael Horowitz said, "in fact, we clearly wouldn't have known about it because absent that video, there was no record of the incident."

The Inspector General's investigation found that DEA failed to properly train agents and document searches, and its report concluded that these failures create "substantial risks that DEA Special Agents (SA) and Task Force Officers (TFO) will conduct these activities improperly; impose unwarranted burdens on, and violate the legal rights of, innocent travelers; imperil the Department's asset forfeiture and seizure activities; and waste law enforcement resources on ineffective interdiction actions."

Milgram's memo also did not acknowledge that the problems with DEA "consensual encounter" searches and seizures at airports have been known for years.

This DEA practice of obtaining passenger travel itineraries from informants at private transportation companies, such as Amtrak and major airlines, was first revealed in 2014, with more information coming out in a 2016 Inspector General audit.

In 2016, a USA Today investigation found the DEA had seized over $209 million from at least 5,200 travelers in 15 major airports over the previous decade.

A 2017 report by the Justice Department's Inspector General found that the DEA seized over $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges. 

That 2017 report warned that the DEA's airport forfeiture activities were undermining its credibility: "When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution."

But DEA cash seizures based on evidence-free suspicions of drug trafficking continued.

I.J. launched its class-action lawsuit in 2020. One of the lead plaintiffs is Terrence Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer who had his life savings of $82,373 seized by the DEA after his daughter tried to take it on a flight out of Pittsburgh with the intent of depositing it in a bank. After the case went public, the DEA returned the money.

Another of the plaintiffs had $43,167 seized by the DEA as she was trying to fly home to Tampa, Florida, from Wilmington, North Carolina. She said the cash was from the sale of a used car, as well as money she and her husband intended to take to a casino. The DEA returned her money after she challenged the seizure as well.

Likewise, in 2021 the DEA returned $28,000 to Kermit Warren, a New Orleans man who said he was flying to Ohio to buy a tow truck when agents seized his life savings at the airport.

In all of these cases, DEA agents accused passengers of being involved in drug trafficking, only to hand the money back once they challenged the seizures. Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can seize cash and property suspected of being connected to illegal activity, even if the owner is not charged with a crime.

Although the DEA has ended "consensual encounter" searches, Alban noted that the DEA could choose to restart the TIP at any time and urged Congress to pass the FAIR Act, legislation that would significantly reform federal civil asset forfeiture practices.

"We once again call on Congress to pass the FAIR Act to permanently reform federal civil forfeiture laws that encourage and enable this bad behavior," Alban said. "FAIR would end the profit incentive, close the equitable sharing loophole, and guarantee every property owner receives their day in court by ending so-called administrative forfeitures."