(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Drug Enforcement Administration to suspend consensual searches at airports and other mass transit facilities after learning of potential civil rights violations.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the suspension after hearing concerns about the DEA’s transportation interdiction efforts, which include conducting consensual searches. During such searches, DEA task forces approach people at airports, ask for consent to speak with the person and, if special agents or task force agents deem it warranted, ask for consent to search the person. personal effects of the individual.

The practice raised civil rights concerns after video of a search was made public.

Horowitz said the DEA did not follow its own policies on searches, which often involved the seizure of cash. Such seizures require the traveler to prove that the money does not come from drug trafficking in order to get it back.

Horowitz said the DEA was not following its own policy to document every consensual encounter, although the agency promised to do so in 2015. The inspector general’s office also said the DEA had suspended its training on transportation ban in 2023. Such training is required by DEA policy and has not restarted, according to the note.

The alert came after a raid earlier this year involving a traveler who was approached for a consensual encounter by a DEA task force officer as he boarded a flight.

After the traveler refused to consent to a search, the DEA task force officer detained the traveler’s carry-on bag. Then a drug detection dog alerted to the bag. The passenger eventually signed a consent form. No cash, drugs or other contraband was found. By then, the traveler had missed his original flight. The traveler documented the incident and later made an edited version public.

Horowitz’s office also learned that the DEA task force selected the passenger based on information from a confidential DEA source, who was an employee of a commercial airline. The employee notified the DEA of travelers who had purchased tickets in the 48 hours before their trip.

“The OIG learned that the DEA paid this employee a percentage of the confiscated money seized by the DEA office from passengers at the local airport when the seizure resulted from information the employee provided to the DEA “, according to the note. “The employee had received tens of thousands of dollars from the DEA over the past several years.”

The OIG concluded that continuing this research could “jeopardize the Department’s forfeiture and asset seizure activities.”

“In the absence of critical controls, such as adequate policies, guidance, training, and data collection, the DEA creates substantial risks that DEA special agents and task force officers will conduct these surveillance activities. inappropriately impose unjustified burdens and violate the legal rights of innocent travelers; jeopardize the Department’s confiscation and asset seizure activities; and waste law enforcement resources in actions; ineffective bans.

The Assistant Attorney General issued a directive to the DEA suspending all consensual encounters at public transportation facilities “unless they are related to an ongoing prior investigation involving one or more identified targets or criminal networks or approved by the DEA Administrator based on urgent circumstances. “