Report Exposes Warrantless Cash Searches at Atlanta Airport

In a startling probe report, Atlanta News First uncovered the concerning practices of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task unit officers. At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, DEA officers, successful plain clothes, person been recovered searching passengers’ carry-ons without warrants and seizing ample sums of currency without making arrests. The study and attorneys accidental the signifier raises law and privateness concerns among American citizens.

Plainclothes Cash Hunts astatine Airports

Atlanta News First precocious shadowed DEA task unit officers astatine Hartsfield-Jackson, observing them arsenic they discreetly moved from gross to gate. Passengers were searched close aft scanning their boarding passes, often without immoderate wide denotation of the officers’ existent individuality oregon purpose.

Film manager Tabari Sturdivant recounted his unsettling experience. Mistaking a DEA cause for a Delta typical owed to displayed airdrome credentials, helium said, “He conscionable approached me, and helium asked maine for my ID. He didn’t authorities who helium was. He conscionable asked maine for ID, and I thought helium was a Delta agent. He had airdrome credentials on, and truthful I gave it to him immediately.”

The filmmaker noted that the DEA agents didn’t find thing suspicious but asked him:

Are you high? Have you smoked? Do you person immoderate drugs successful this bag? Do you person immoderate money?

Warrantless searches and seizures straight interruption the Fourth Amendment, which is aimed astatine safeguarding American citizens from specified unreasonable intrusions. The study notes that these actions by DEA agents not lone infringe connected idiosyncratic freedoms but besides erode the public’s spot successful instrumentality enforcement agencies.

This isn’t the archetypal occurrence of the DEA and instrumentality enforcement authorities unlawfully seizing individuals’ assets. Take, for example, the DEA’s extensive way record of orchestrating “cold consent encounters” astatine Amtrak stations, mirroring their tactics astatine airports. In 2021, FBI agents confiscated $86 million from information deposit boxes successful Beverly Hills, a determination attorneys decried arsenic lacking due justification.

A report by Reason reveals that, implicit the past decade, instrumentality enforcement, with the DEA astatine the forefront, has seized a staggering $4 cardinal successful cash. Data from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) indicates that astir 65,000 currency seizures, representing 81%, were subjected to administrative forfeiture by the DEA, amounting to $3.2 billion.

Atlanta News First highlights that movie manager Sturdivant represents conscionable a fraction of those scrutinized for currency by undercover officers astatine the airport. The investigative portion besides points a digit astatine Clayton County narcotics officers. The quality squad recovered “several akin cases wherever officers with the DEA task unit oregon Clayton County Police searched guiltless radical oregon seized wealth without making immoderate arrests.”

In 2023, carrying important currency amounts is progressively viewed with suspicion, adjacent if earned rightfully with proven receipts. Constitutionalists and lawyers importune that instrumentality enforcement’s propensity to outright confiscate these beingness savings, without conscionable cause, is simply a disturbing trend.

What bash you deliberation astir the study astir the Atlanta airdrome searches? Share your thoughts and opinions astir this taxable successful the comments conception below.