Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to reinstate a controversial tactic for fighting drug trafficking drew fire from Utah Republican Mike Lee, a longtime Senate ally who regards the Justice Department policy as unconstitutional.
“The DOJ seems determined to lose in court before it changes its policies for the better,” Lee said Wednesday.
Sessions unveiled a new policy governing civil asset forfeiture, a procedure by which law enforcement can confiscate money they believe flows from drug dealing and other criminal activity. The decision reverses an Obama administration restriction of such seizures, in an attempt to crack down more effectively on drugs and violent crime.
“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” Sessions said Monday.
That’s a disappointment for some conservative and libertarian-leaning Republicans. Lee and other lawmakers argue that policy allows the government to punish people before they have been convicted of a crime, a violation of the Constitution, and that innocent people can be ensnared by the tactic.
“This is a troubling decision for the due process protections afforded to us under the Fourth Amendment as well as the growing consensus we’ve seen nationwide on this issue,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Wednesday. “Criminals shouldn’t be able to keep the proceeds of their crime, but innocent Americans shouldn’t lose their right to due process, or their private property rights, in order to make that happen.”
Sessions, whose position on the tactic was one of his main disagreements with Lee during their time serving together in the Senate, built safeguards into the new policy designed to make it less likely for innocent people to have property confiscated.
“It’s not about taking assets from innocent people,” deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said on Wednesday. “It’s about taking assets that are the proceeds of … criminal activity, primarily drug dealing.”
Critics of the new policy say those extra protections are too weak and in any case only apply to attempts to seize $10,000 or more; officers have broader latitude to take cash they uncover in smaller quantities.
“No one should lose his or her property without being first convicted of a crime, let alone charged with one,” Institute for Justice senior attorney Darpana Sheth, whose organization has represented people trying to recover money that was seized under old asset forfeiture policies, said Wednesday.
“The only safeguard to protect Americans from civil forfeiture is to eliminate its use altogether.”
