How Amtrak helps the DEA bully innocent passengers


Last week, a young aspiring music video producer had his life savings seized by the DEA while traveling on Amtrak, despite never being charged with a crime. The story attracted a good deal of attention from national outlets–but it’s hardly an isolated incident.


Back in 2001, Reason profiled a similar case, where the DEA seized nearly $150,000 from Vietnamese immigrant Sam Thach.


Amtrak had alerted the feds about Thach because he purchased his ticket in cash and did not provide a phone number. Thach, who barely spoke English, had no idea this behavior would flag him as a likely drug dealer. He sued the government for the return of his money.


According to information obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request, Amtrak–much like the TSA–holds remarkably low standards for judging someone a possible threat and reporting them to the authorities. Things like “looking around while making a telephone call,” “carrying little or no luggage,” or “purchase of tickets in cash” are all considered suspicious behavior that merits a law enforcement intervention.

The ACLU made the request because they had “received reports from individuals wrongfully searched and arrested on Amtrak trains.” They suspect that this Amtrak-DEA collaboration provides “grounds for civil asset forfeiture.”

Earlier this week, yet another victim of the DEA’s seize-first-ask-questions-later policies contacted The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf to tell his own story of DEA harassment.


37-year-old Aaron Heuser, an Oregon resident and mathematician who had just left his job at National Institutes of Health, was en route to Washington D.C. on an Amtrak sleeper car. A DEA agent demanded to search his room, because “there were many red flags on my trip, mainly that I had a sleeper car, was traveling alone, and did not check my luggage.”

The officer asked him why he was traveling, and at first seemed satisfied by his explanation. But he quickly changed his tone, began acting like he knew Heuser was guilty, and asked to search his room. Since Heuser had nothing to hide and felt intimidated a part of him wanted to comply. But as a fan of the ACLU and the son of hippie parents, he instead decided to assert his right to be free from unreasonable searches.
The DEA agent pressed the matter.

“After that he asked if he could bring a dog into my room to check out the bags, to which I again said ‘no,’” said Heuser, who hasn’t passed the bar but knows a little bit about Fourth Amendment law. “Finally he told me that he was going to bring a dog, walk it by my room, and that if alerted, my room would be searched. He told me that I could not argue this and that I was not allowed to be present for the search. His reasoning for violating my right to be present was that the dog might bite me.”



While trying to move around the train, Heuser was stopped by more officers and asked to step off. The officer eventually claimed that someone was hiding in Heuser’s bathroom and said he wanted to check it out. Heuser told him he would allow the conductor to check and ensure that no one was hiding there. 


A DEA agent then “looked him in the eye and said ‘You Oregonians may think that the green leafy stuff is harmless, but I know from my job that it kills people every day.'”


When Heuser returned to his room, he found $60 missing from his wallet.

“I told one of the dining car attendants that I felt Amtrak and the DEA violated my rights,” he said. “She told me that Amtrak is forced to give passenger info to Feds, that the DEA comes on every trip, usually arresting someone in the sleeping car or taking all their money. When I asked for her name in case I needed it later she refused and told me Amtrak would fire her.”

Read the rest of his story here.

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