The Justice Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a management alert on Thursday noting significant concerns about the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) civil asset forfeiture practices at airports and other mass transit facilities.
The report found that the DEA regularly violated its own policies, and used dubious practices such as paying informants a percentage of the cash its agents seized under civil asset forfeiture.
“The DEA was not complying with DEA policy to document each consensual encounter, despite prior DEA representations to the OIG…that the DEA was doing so,” the report noted, referring to instances in which agents obtain a passenger’s consent before questioning them or searching their belongings. IT continued:
By proceeding with such interdiction activities in the absence of critical controls, such as adequate…
