Forfeiture Triple Play To Close Out 2024

Good things came in threes for opponents of forfeiture abuse in late 2024.

First, after IJ released a YouTube video in July depicting the Drug Enforcement Administration’s shocking treatment of an air traveler, the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General issued a scathing report about DEA airport forfeitures in November. That report led to the DOJ suspending the DEA’s so-called “consensual encounter” airport interdiction program nationwide just before Thanksgiving, allowing holiday travelers to breathe a sigh of relief.

IJ has been criticizing DEA’s predatory airport cash seizure practices for years—and we are suing about them in a class action. Spurred by our video, which has received over 3 million views, the OIG report confirmed many of the abuses. And, at least for the time being, the DEA’s most abusive airport seizure practices have been grounded. Now IJ is looking to make these policy changes permanent through our lawsuit and through the passage of federal forfeiture reform legislation.

Watch the case video!

Second, a study by IJ researchers on the effects of forfeiture reform in New Mexico was published in the peer-reviewed Criminal Justice Review. Using nine years of monthly data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, the study found that eliminating civil forfeiture—and ending the financial incentive to pursue criminal forfeitures—did not worsen crime rates in New Mexico relative to rates in neighboring states. 

When New Mexico enacted these reforms in 2015, law enforcement groups warned that this would open the state to cartels, promote criminal activity, and hamper police and prosecutors’ ability to do their jobs by directing forfeiture proceeds away from law enforcement coffers. But IJ’s analysis demonstrated that civil forfeiture and forfeiture proceeds are not needed to fight crime. Loyal followers of IJ’s forfeiture work may recall that an early version of the study was first published in 2020 in the third edition of our Policing for Profit report.

Third, IJ’s clients Henry and Minh Cheng, who own a wholesale jewelry business in California, will get back the $42,000 seized by Indianapolis police after the cash was shipped to them by a retail customer on the East Coast. 

The seized parcel traveled through the FedEx hub in Indianapolis, the second largest in the United States, where Indiana police have developed a profiteering forfeiture operation to seize “suspicious” packages and forfeit millions of dollars. For example, the flimsy reasons given for seizing and searching the Chengs’ package include that it was a newly purchased box taped on all seams, just as the FedEx website recommends. 

In late November, Marion County prosecutors agreed to return the seized money a few months after IJ filed suit. But IJ’s class action countersuit over unconstitutional seizures at the facility will continue. Indiana police simply have no business seizing property being shipped through the state without any evidence of a crime actually being committed there.

Some say three times is a pattern—here’s hoping for another trifecta of forfeiture victories early in 2025!

Dan Alban is an IJ senior attorney and co-director of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.