In February 2022, during the Canadian crackdown on the truckers’ Freedom Convoy, the mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson, announced he would sell the confiscated vehicles and use the funds to help pay for the illegal crackdown. Watson’s edict caused a ruckus, including in America. The reality, though, is that this shakedown operation has been ongoing for decades in America. In fact, it is an annual multi-billion-dollar racket enforced by all levels of government: local, state, and federal.

Over the last 20 years, this racketeering scheme, which is often called “civil asset forfeiture,” has netted over $68 billion for local and federal governments. In fact, over a 20-year period, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has seized (and kept) more than $203 million in cash from travelers at O’Hare International Airport and, in most cases, no charges were ever filed.

In the United States, the government can raid citizens’ homes and keep property even though the citizen has never been convicted of a crime! Welcome to the murky world of civil asset forfeiture, where the government needs only a preponderance of evidence to seize your belongings, including cash. This is because the proceedings are civil, not criminal, and the higher standard (beyond a reasonable doubt) does not apply. Criminal asset forfeiture kicks in only when someone has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for a crime from which they profited directly.

Even if an alleged criminal is found not guilty in a criminal trial, is it possible for the government to keep that individual’s property? The answer to that question is a frightening yes. Furthermore, many of the cases involve situations where the accused must prove innocence, flipping on its head our system of innocent until the government meets the burden of proving guilt. Many times, proving innocence involves proving a negative.

Image of a police officer taking money by Pixlr AI.

For example, consider the scenario in which someone is accused of having grown marijuana in a remote corner of a large tract of land. If he doesn’t wish to lose his property, the landowner must prove that he did not cultivate the crop or work with a third party who, unbeknownst to the owner, did cultivate the crop.

In Philadelphia, an elderly lady with end-stage renal disease had to rely on her neighbors just to make it through the day and consequently never locked her door. One day, police were pursuing a drug suspect who entered her front door and ran out the back. Afterward, they found in her home a small quantity of drugs that the fleeing suspect had obviously dropped. That didn’t stop the District Attorney from trying to seize her house. No wonder the aptly named Institute for Justice (IJ) has tackled civil asset forfeiture—i.e., policing for profit—with a vengeance.

America’s Founders clearly understood that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity but of freedom itself. Today that cherished notion is under savage assault.

According to the Institute,

The federal government and most states use civil forfeiture to take cash, cars and more without charging owners with a crime. The proceeds often flow into accounts controlled by law enforcement, sometimes including the same police and prosecutors who seized and forfeited the property.

The IJ sternly warns that,

Legislators should recognize that it is our most vulnerable citizens who are suffering the most under this unjust system that divides communities and law enforcement. It is time for legislators to end civil forfeiture, replace it with criminal forfeiture and direct forfeiture proceeds to neutral accounts.

Cash is not a crime. Nevertheless, a healthy proportion of asset forfeitures involve highway traffic stops. Police will look for rental cars or cars with out-of-state licenses and pull them over for minor traffic violations. Then, if police determine the occupant seems “suspicious,” they will ask to search the vehicle. If a large amount of cash is found, police will seize it as drug-related.

Consider the case of Ameal Woods. With help from his wife, he saved up $40,000 in cash to buy a used tractor-trailer. Imagine his surprise when the police pulled him over for allegedly following a tractor-trailer too closely—something that, as a truck driver himself, Ameal knows he did not do. When Houston police officers found that he was traveling with cash, their focus shifted to the money, with their concerns about following at a safe distance vanishing. Ultimately, they let Ameal go minus his cash, giving him, instead, a receipt reading “currency seizure.”

According to the IJ, “What Ameal did was legal: He drove with cash. What the police did was illegal: They took his cash without probable cause.” The IJ adds that: “Texas’ most populous city [Houston] has set up perhaps the worst forfeiture system anywhere in the nation.”

IJ is bringing Ameal’s case as a class action lawsuit to provide immediate relief to the hundreds of people who have fallen victim to these outrageous practices. Its goal is to fight all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and score a victory for property rights.

Another troubling aspect of civil asset forfeiture is that there is no transparency about how much money and property governments are seizing and how much money of this money they are spending. In Oklahoma, a district attorney ignored a court order to sell a seized home and instead lived in it rent-free for five years.

In 2015, the prosecutor’s office in Hamilton County, Ohio, spent almost $15,000 on “briefcases for attorneys.”

One of the most heinous cases involved Carl Nelson and Amy Sterner Nelson, residents of West Seattle. Reason wrote about what happened in an article entitled “The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Family—and Never Charged Them With a Crime.“ The story got almost no media because, as Amy said, “I am frightened of saying anything. Because this is incredibly scary.”

In May 2020, the FBI seized almost $1 million from the Nelsons. Their crime? Carl, a former real estate developer for Amazon, was accused of favoring certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks. Carl denies the accusation. “That never happened and is exactly why I’ve fought as long and hard as I have… It’s that simple.”

Significantly, despite a years-long investigation, the FBI never indicted Carl. Instead, in early 2022 the FBI agreed to return $525,000 of the approximately $892,000 it seized, while Amy and Carl forfeit about $109,000. Court fees devoured the rest.

What happened to the Nelsons is typical of how the government bludgeons the citizens: first comes the looting and then the endless expenses (lawyers and court fees) to try to recover what the government shouldn’t have seized in the first place.

It’s abhorrent that law enforcement across America has a mindset saying it’s okay to prey on innocent citizens, ruining their lives by confiscating their property and taking away their cash. Yet it has been raging across America for decades.

Last March, Congress reintroduced an enhanced version of the bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, H.R. 1525 which would enact a sweeping overhaul of federal civil forfeiture laws. The bill would remove the profit incentive that drives so many federal forfeitures and end the federal “equitable sharing” program that is used to circumvent state law protections for property rights. It’s high time this law passes, returning respect for private property and correctly orienting the burden of proof.