Customs to Hold Drug Carriers’ Passports

The Customs Service plans to confiscate the passports of Americans caught bringing small quantities of drugs into the country beginning March 15 in an effort to deter smuggling, customs officials said Thursday.

However, the State Department probably will challenge the move as illegally infringing on the constitutional right of Americans to travel and a threat to the integrity of the passport as a travel document.

The customs plan “raises serious constitutional issues,” State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said Thursday. She said that the department would not comment further until its legal advisers have studied the customs agency proposal.

An earlier plan proposed by customs head William von Raab to stamp the passports of those trying to re-enter the country carrying drugs was blocked by the State Department last year on grounds that such an identification would violate citizens’ rights to due process of law and put Americans in jeopardy when traveling abroad.

Brands State Department

Von Raab at the time angrily branded the State Department as “soft on drugs” and vowed to continue his fight to use the U.S. passport as a weapon in his agency’s war on narcotics.

Earlier this week, the customs chief complained about State Department “bureaucrats who are conscientious objectors in our war on drugs.” Speaking at a Washington conference on drugs Wednesday, Von Raab also berated unnamed Administration officials “who can find a legal reason for not doing anything.”

Edward L. Kittredge, a customs agency spokesman, said that the plan’s intent is to deter small-scale drug smuggling by individuals by denying them, at least temporarily, the right to international travel. The passport would be seized as evidence of the crime of drug smuggling, requiring the suspect to petition the State Department to get his passport returned or replaced.

Law enforcement agencies and courts have shown little enthusiasm for prosecuting cases involving small amounts of drugs so that relatively few persons entering the country with “personal quantities” of illegal narcotics are held for prosecution, Kittredge said.

Usually Pay Small Fine

Because the courts are overloaded with drug cases, many U.S. citizens caught re-entering the country with relatively small amounts of drugs are allowed to plead guilty and pay a small fine, usually less than $200.

“Our aim is to deter people from coming into the country with small quantities of drugs,” he said. “We stop hundreds of people, maybe thousands, every year who are entering the country with a personal quantity of drugs in their pockets.”

“We are obliged to process these people, arrest them, or collect an administrative penalty,” Kittredge said. “It requires the time of an inspector that we think would be better spent on the line watching for large quantities of drugs being smuggled into the country.”

Meese Supports Plan

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who chairs the President’s National Drug Policy Board, said he supports the customs service passport confiscation plan and said he would try to find legal justification for it.

“We’re in favor of it, and we’re looking now at the legal aspects of it,” Meese said in a television interview Thursday. “I hope we will find legal ways to do that. There’s no reason that drug traffickers should have freedom to travel around the world peddling their wares.”

Experts in immigration law criticized the customs plan as unconstitutional.

‘Very Precious Document’

“Government officers can’t just reach out and take things away from us unless it’s contraband or evidence of a crime,” said Sam Bernsen, former general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “You cannot just seize a passport, which is a very precious document. It is evidence of a person’s U.S. citizenship.”

Bernsen said that if customs officials want to build a case against a suspected drug smuggler, they can make photocopies of the relevant pages of the suspect’s passport. He said that a passport can be confiscated or withheld, but only after an administrative hearing or under court order.