Feds spend billions to boost your 'required forfeiture' of property

'Congress must act to prevent law enforcement from treating Americans like ATMs'

By Bob Unruh
Published May 7, 2023 at 11:51am

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The federal government has announced a program to spend $6 billion to boost the amount of property Americans are required to "forfeit" to the government.

It's a lucrative business for the feds. For example, a report from the Institute for Justice notes that federal agencies grabbed some $45.7 billion in "revenue" by forcing Americans' to forfeit various assets from 2000 to 2019.

About $31 billion was given to the DOJ's Assets Forfeiture Fund and about $15 billion to the Treasury Forfeiture Fund.

The DOJ and Treasury control that money entirely, and it can be handed out without congressional approval.

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The IJ reported the DOJ now has adopted a plan to give private corporations $6.24 billion over a five-year period to "increase the capacity" for more forfeitures.

"The sheer size of these contracts demonstrates how forfeiture has become a big business for federal law enforcement," explained Dan Alban, director of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.

"And it’s not just DOJ and DHS that have become addicted to forfeiture dollars; there’s now an entire forfeiture-industrial complex dependent on the feds continuing these predatory practices. These are six billion reasons we need civil forfeiture reform now. Congress must act to prevent law enforcement from treating ordinary Americans like ATMs."

One part of the issue is pending before the Supreme Court right now. It's a Minnesota case where a woman, behind in her taxes, lost her condominium to the government. The government there then kept the entire proceeds from the sale, tens of thousands of dollars more than was owed in taxes.

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The IJ reported in March Congress reintroduced the bipartisan Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, H.R. 1525, which would overhaul federal civil forfeiture laws.

"The bill would remove the profit incentive that drives so many federal forfeitures, end the federal 'equitable sharing' program that is used to circumvent state law protections for property rights, and eliminate the unfair administrative forfeiture process," the IJ said.

The vast majority of federal forfeitures are civil in nature, in that the government never charges anyone with a crime; it just takes the asset and keeps it.

Property owners are forced to hire lawyers and go to court to try to "prove" that their asset is "innocent" and should be returned.

"From 2000 to 2019, 84% of DOJ forfeitures were civil forfeitures, while from 2000 to 2016, 98% of Treasury forfeitures were civil forfeitures," the IJ reported.

That means they were processed "administratively" and the owners whose property was taken never got their day in court.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although millions of American parents send their precious children off to public school every day, imagining their kids’ days will be filled with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, sports and music, they’re not only in for a shock – but for total BETRAYAL. Today’s “public” (government) schools have become far-left ideological, political and religious indoctrination centers aimed at reprogramming and transforming America’s children.

Kids are being taught to HATE their own country and to see themselves and their parents as racists – or victims of racists. They are sexualized and corrupted, and many are groomed into the dark LGBT world, with almost 6,000 schools prohibiting parents from even hearing about their child’s transgender “transition.” In between all the far-left indoctrination and sexual corruption, teachers take time to scare children to death about the near-term end of life on earth due to “catastrophic climate change.” Another lie. But it’s all classic Marxism/communism, with even the “3 R’s” – reading, writing and arithmetic – now being corrupted with “woke,” “1984”-style madness.

Perhaps never has the true threat of today’s U.S. public school system been exposed as in the sensational April issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled “THE GREATEST BETRAYAL: How Marxism and madness have taken over America’s public school system.” Whistleblower is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.