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Will TSA Looting End Before Hell Freezes Over? – OpEd

9 0
04.06.2026

For more than a decade, TSA agents have plundered passengers at airport security checkpoints on the flimsiest or most shameless pretexts.  If you get stopped at an airport security checkpoint with $100 or more in cash, TSA agents can fleece you.

Since it was created almost 25 years ago, TSA has often been criticized for targeting antiwar activists, Green Party members, or prominent leftists. TSA even has a secret watchlist for people who are “publicly notorious” – especially if they are notorious for criticizing TSA. Such targeting is especially painful when it leads to cleaning out your wallet or your purse.

More than 10,000 travelers have been stripped of their money by TSA agents since 2014.  But the feds almost never bother filing criminal charges against the victims of asset forfeiture.  TSA considers itself generous when it “permits the passenger to continue on to their destination” – after taking away their money.

Since 2019, the Institute for Justice, a non-profit constitutional law firm, has been fighting this TSA abuse.  Their class action lawsuit was finally got a hearing in federal court in Pittsburgh in February but no decision has been announced.   The case is spearheaded by Dan Alban, America’s forfeiture knockout champion. “TSA has secret policies that tell its screeners that they must seize travelers’ cash,” says Alban.

TSA partners with Drug Enforcement Administration, whose forfeiture program unofficial motto is, “You make it, we’ll take it.” TSA and DEA agents automatically confiscate the cash of any domestic traveler they detect with more than $5,000 — their magic threshold for money being “suspicious.”

In August 2019, 57-year-old Rebecca Brown was flying out of Pittsburgh International Airport while carrying a Tupperware container with her father’s life savings — $82,373. Her 79-year-old father was showing signs of........

© Eurasia Review