From the Washington Examiner.
Civil asset forfeiture is just one example of laws designed to make it easy to get at criminals that are routinely used to violate the freedom of honest citizens. That Sessions is ok with such laws shows that he is unfit for his office.
There is a tradeoff between making it easy to prosecute criminals and making it difficult to violate honest citizens' freedom. Those concerned mostly with the former do not deserve the latter.
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His American dream was helping his family in Albania.
It ended when he walked through security at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
A U.S. citizen for more than a decade, Rustem Kazazi was flying back to Europe to help his Albanian family repair their home and maybe even to buy a little beach house somewhere along the Adriatic Sea. He placed $58,100 into three clearly marked envelopes, then packed the money away in his carry-on luggage.
It was 13 years of his life savings – and the federal government took every penny.
TSA employees discovered the cash, and agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized it. But first they strip-searched Kazazi and interrogated the 64-year-old without a translator as he covered himself with a towel.
That was in October. Kazazi still hasn’t been convicted (or charged!) of any crime, and CBP didn’t offer any explanation for a month. But thanks to a law enforcement procedure called civil asset forfeiture, CBP also hasn’t given Kazazi his savings back. The federal government finally came up with an explanation: they suspectedhe was “involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation.”
The large sum wasn’t for anything nefarious explained Kazazi, a former Albanian police office. “The crime in Albania is much worse than it is here,” he told the Washington Post. “Other people that have made large withdrawals [from Albanian banks] have had people intercept them and take their money.” Plus, hard U.S. currency is worth more.
And because traveling with that kind of cash isn’t a crime, the Kazazi family has filed suit against the federal government.
“You have the right to travel with cash in America, even when you’re flying internationally,” said Wesley Hottot, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which represents the Kazazis in the lawsuit. “But again, we’re encountering a situation where law enforcement sees somebody with legal cash, assumes they must have done something criminal, and they just take the money. It is disturbing how little respect federal agents show for the civil rights of American citizens.”
Those federal agents aren’t an anomaly. It’s not just a bad apple here and a rotten one there. Civil asset forfeiture is the preferred policy of the nation’s top cop.
"I love that program," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a law enforcement conference last September. "We had so much fun doing that, taking drug dealers' money and passing it out to people trying to put drug dealers in jail. What's wrong with that?"
Turns out, a lot is wrong with the 1980s-era policy. Police aren’t just nabbing drug money. Around the country, law enforcement are taking cash, cars, and real-estatewithout ever charging victims with a crime. To seize property, the police only need to suspect it is connected to criminal activity. Afterwards, even clearly innocent citizens like Kazazi have no recourse except a lawsuit.
“This family’s case, like so many others, shows why civil forfeiture must end,” explained IJ attorney Johanna Talcott. “The Kazazis did nothing wrong and were never charged with a crime, but the government still won’t return their money all these months later. This kind of abuse is far too common because civil forfeiture is an inherently abusive process that will always have disastrous effects on innocent people. Enough is enough.”
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