When law enforcement officers seize personal property for forfeiture, they can first get a judge’s approval in the form of a seizure warrant. Or they can take advantage of exceptions found in nearly all civil forfeiture laws that permit warrantless seizures if officers claim probable cause to believe the property is forfeitable. ¹  Available data suggest this is how most seizures happen—without prior authorization from a neutral arbiter.

At the state level, warrantless seizures appear to be common. So too are seizures resulting from roadside stops, which are unlikely to result from a warrant. As Figure 5 shows, warrantless or roadside seizures predominate in three of four states with sufficient data: 76% in Kansas, 73% in South Dakota, and 54% in Utah. ²  Only in Oregon were warrantless seizures reportedly a minority, at 25%, but more than a third of seizures in the state’s data were missing a seizure method or involved multiple methods. ³  

Figure 5: Warrantless and roadside seizures, four states and DEA

From available data, warrantless and roadside seizures were common

Note: DEA data are from a sample of 3,535 currency seizures at airports from 2014–2020; Oregon and Utah data are from 2019–2023; Kansas data are from July 2019–2023; and South Dakota data are from 2022–2023.

Warrantless seizures have also been common at the federal level. Among a sample of 3,535 currency seizures conducted at airports by the Drug Enforcement Administration between 2014 and 2020, only 3% were seized with a warrant. Seizures that the DEA categorized as “warrantless/probable cause” seizures made up 40%, while 56% resulted from warrantless “consent searches.” ⁴  As we discuss later, these seizures were part of a DEA search-and-seizure program at airports that was dismantled in January 2025 after the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General repeatedly raised concerns about its effectiveness, lack of internal controls, and threats to civil rights. ⁵