Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, I also want to thank my colleagues, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Mr. Conyers, and Mr. Mooney, for cosponsoring and supporting this amendment.

It is a bipartisan amendment and, I think, a natural complement to the excellent amendments just added from Mr. Walberg and also from Mr. Amash. It would prohibit funding made available by this act from being used to implement the recent DOJ policy change, which dramatically expands the Federal Government's civil Asset Forfeiture Program.

The new policy revives a controversial and, I think, unconstitutional practice that has been decried by Americans and Members of Congress across the political spectrum who hold dear the idea of due process and the presumption of innocence as it applies not just to us as people but also to our private property as well.

The new policy allows State and local law enforcement to circumvent State laws limiting civil asset forfeiture by having Federal agencies adopt State and local cases. Under this dubious practice, law enforcement may seize a citizen's cash and property simply because someone suspects it of being connected to criminal activity without convicting, indicting, arresting, or even charging the property owner with having committed a crime and without proving or even alleging in court that the property is somehow connected to criminal activity.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property have been seized in this way by law enforcement on an officer's mere suspicion. In order to get your property back, you have to go out and hire a lawyer, you have to go to court, and you have to prove that your property was obtained through innocent means, completely reversing the constitutional presumption of innocence that is at the heart of due process.

This practice is an outrageous violation of property rights, of civil liberties, and of the due process principle that we are all presumed to be innocent as American citizens, and it raises profound questions also under the Takings Clause, which forbids the taking of private property without just compensation by the government.

Although the resurrected policy contains a few new safeguards, they will not remotely prevent abusive seizures or eliminate the profit incentives that encourage rampant civil asset forfeiture. The policy will lead to the same abuses uncovered in 2014.

A Washington Post investigation found that, since 2001, State and local law enforcement had made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth nearly $2.5 billion under the civil Asset Forfeiture Program.

One striking case discussed by The New York Times was of Carole Hinders, owner of a restaurant in Arnolds Park, Iowa, who deposited her cash earnings in the bank on a weekly basis, and it was always under $10,000. She was suspected of illegally structuring her deposits, although they were perfectly innocent, and the IRS simply seized $33,000 from her, causing huge problems for her business.

Another case that caught my eye was of a Chinese-American restaurateur who was traveling with a large sum of money because he was about to buy a building for his new restaurant. He had been saving for decades to buy his own restaurant. He was stopped by the police and became understandably very anxious during the encounter. The police said that they found the large sum of cash money he had with him suspicious, and his nervous demeanor also telling, and they simply seized his money. They detained him for 2 hours. They let him go. They didn't charge him with anything, but they seized his money, his life savings that he had planned to use to purchase the building for his restaurant. He was a lucky one in that he was able, eventually years later, to get his money back, but he lost the business deal and his deposit in the process.
In 2014, the value of money and property seized under civil asset forfeitures by Federal law enforcement exceeded the total of losses in money and property from burglaries in our country. That means our people lost more money at the hands of the government through civil asset forfeiture than from being burglarized.
Because of the abuses revealed in 2015, the DOJ imposed restrictions to limit when the Federal Government could adopt forfeiture cases, and banned State and local police from using Federal law to seize cash and property without criminal charges or warrants, but the new policy lifts these restrictions and places the Federal Government back on the side of the trampling of people's constitutional rights.
With civil asset forfeiture, people cannot only lose their property without being charged with a crime, they can also lose their property when someone else allegedly uses their property in commission of a crime.
A Michigan woman lost a car she co-owned with her husband because he was caught soliciting prostitution while driving her car.
This policy runs roughshod over the property rights of the innocent and burdens our citizens with onerous costs to get their property back that they never should have lost in the first place.
Mr. Chair, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all agree that civil asset forfeiture is a serious threat to constitutional values.
Mr. Chair, I urge all of us to vote for this important amendment.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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