U.S. Customs: An Agency Out of Control?

Stephen Pope

Thursday, June 05, 2014 at 08:18 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Post-9/11, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) received expanded authority, leading to an invasive program that targets general aviation (GA) pilots with warrantless stops and searches nationwide.
CBP monitors GA aircraft for "suspicious behavior," flagging common and legal flight activities, which results in hundreds of investigations into innocent pilots annually.
Despite its anti-terrorism mandate and significant cost, the program has never intercepted a terrorist, yielding only a tiny number of minor violations from numerous investigations.
The article calls for Congressional intervention to curb CBP's perceived "out of control" authority over the general aviation community.

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After 9/11 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency’s authority and funding saw massive expansions as its mission swelled from border security to a statutory mandate to keep a watchful eye for terrorist threats anywhere in the country.

Part of that broadened authority includes the CBP’s General Aviation Pilot Certificate Inspection program, which as you probably know has led to warrantless stops and even searches on airport tarmacs of more than 50 innocent AOPA members. This assault on GA probably gives you cause for concern. It might even make you angry. But guess what? It’s worse than you thought. Much worse.