Editorial: Airport robbery

The Drug Enforcement Administration has found a unique method to make up for any funding shortfalls. It just steals the money.

USA Today reported Thursday that the agency routinely pores over travel information in search of what it considers suspicious activity, such as a buying a one-way ticket or paying in cash. Profiled passengers may then face interrogation or searches at airports, train stations or bus terminals — and if agents find large amounts of cash, they simply take it.

The passengers who lose their money are rarely charged with criminal activity.

“DEA units assigned to patrol 15 of the nation’s busiest airports seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people over the past decade after concluding the money was linked to drug trafficking,” the paper found. McCarran International Airport didn’t make the list, but LAX in Los Angeles did.

One former DEA agent told the paper that the agency counts on the booty “as part of the budget.” Local police agencies may also get a share of the loot.

All this is possible under the nation’s civil forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement to seize homes, cars, cash and other valuables on a mere suspicion they may be linked to a crime. The property owner need never be arrested or formally accused. Once prosecutors initiate forfeiture proceedings, those who hope to reclaim their property face an expensive, time-consuming and almost insurmountable task in civil proceedings that lack the standards of evidence and protections of a criminal trial.

While many of those who lost their money may indeed have been guilty of something, the DEA tactics threaten innocent travelers and represent an affront to due process and private property rights. The fact that few of these people are ever charged with wrongdoing or used to build criminal cases highlights that these are money grabs masquerading as societal protection.

And it’s another reason why Congress should make it a high priority to reform these statutes.