Harassment-Free Thanksgiving Travel? DOJ Grounds DEA Airport Searches Amid Misconduct Concerns

The Department of Justice has halted the DEA’s airport searches.

This come after a bombshell report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Turns out the review uncovered the DEA’s failure to follow its own guidelines for consensual encounters.

There are those who have alleged the DEA were acting like thugs with badges.

One of the main accusations against them is that they would wrongly target passengers based financial incentives.

DOJ suspends DEA searches at airports over civil rights concerns https://t.co/3GFxKhVkrm pic.twitter.com/Gt2OlnjBF3

— New York Post (@nypost) November 23, 2024

Breitbart reports:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to suspend searches of passengers at airports and other places after a DOJ watchdog report found “concerns” over the way DEA officials were conducting the searches.

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In a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Michael E. Horowitz, on Thursday, it was revealed that the OIG had found instances in which DEA officers were “not complying with its own policy on consensual encounters conducted at mass transportation facilities.”

The press release from Horowitz found the DEA not following its policy regarding consensual encounters with passengers, and this “resulted in DEA and DEA Task Force Group personnel creating potentially significant operational and legal risks.”

Examples of how the DEA was “creating potentially significant operational and legal risks,” were the DEA not documenting “each consensual encounter,” and required training for DEA and DEA Task Force Group personnel being suspended since 2023.

“In 2023, the DEA suspended the transportation interdiction training required by DEA policy and has not restarted it,” the press release said. “As a result, the DEA was not ensuring that all DEA Task Force Group personnel conducting transportation interdiction activities completed that required training, despite the DEA’s prior representations to the OIG, in connection with resolution of a recommendation in a 2015 OIG report, that the DEA would do so, creating significant risk that DEA Task Force Group personnel will conduct transportation interdiction activities improperly.”

The press release referenced an incident in which the DEA Task Force Group had “selected” a traveler for a consensual encounter “based on information provided by a DEA confidential source, who was an employee of a commercial airline.” This employee had reportedly been paid “a percentage of forfeited cash seized by the DEA office from passengers” at the airport on seizures that had been conducted as a result of “information the employee” had given.

Although the traveler had “declined to provide consent,” the traveler’s carry-on bag ended up being detained, and “a law enforcement drug-detection dog” ended up alerting “to the bag.” The search ended with no drug, money, “or other contraband” being discovered.

That resulted in the passenger missing his flight.

Makes you wonder if there’s more to this story than they are letting on.

Did he have a MAGA hat on and so they were giving him a hard time?

Question everything.

And for those of you flying this Thanksgiving season, remember that the constitution still applies in the airport:

The airport is NOT a constitution-free zone.
✈️🙅📃

At airports across the U.S., DEA agents confront flyers as they are boarding flights and ask to search carry-on items.

These interactions are supposed to be consensual.

However, flyers often get the impression that they have… pic.twitter.com/zkvJRyjxj9

— Institute for Justice (@IJ) September 24, 2024