Air travelers are expected to identify themselves truthfully to law enforcement officers and “screening” personnel at checkpoints and in “secure” areas of airports. But the reverse isn’t true, apparently, for the police and other personnel carrying out airport “screening”.

Members of drug interdiction “Task Force Groups” (TFGs) comprised of state and local police and agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have been representing themselves to air travelers in “secure” areas of airports (beyond the TSA checkpoints) as conducting “secondary inspections”. In fact, these TFGs were conducting warrantless, suspicionless searches for illegal drugs that can be seized and generate forfeiture revenue for the agencies participating in the TFGs.

When these searches were reported (sometimes no records were kept), they were represented as having been “consensual”, even though the use of the term, “secondary inspection” could reasonably have been interpreted by travelers as implying that the TFG members were conducting airport security “screening” to which travelers were required to submit. Similar misrepresentations may have been made at train and bus stations and other transportation facilities where TFGs operate as part of the DEA’s “Jetway” drug interdiction program.

The misrepresentations by DEA agents and other law enforcement officers were revealed in a report by the DEA Office of Inspector General (OIG), which has the role within the DEA that an “internal affairs” office might play in a local police department.

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