D.Ariz.: Border exit searches are permissible to assure compliance with the currency reporting laws

Border exit searches are permissible without reasonable suspicion to assure compliance with the currency reporting laws. United States v. Chavira, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88681 (D.Ariz. May 19, 2016), adopted 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88680 (D.Ariz. July 7, 2016):

In Seljan, the Ninth Circuit addressed the reasonableness of a border search conducted by customs inspectors conducting an outbound currency interdiction operation targeting packages sent to the Philippines. 547 F.3d at 999. While that is not the precise situation here, the court’s reasoning in Seljan is instructive. The court first noted that under 18 U.S.C. § 5316, a report must be filed with the Secretary of the Treasury whenever a person transports, or is about to transport, monetary instruments worth more than $10,000 into or out of the United States. Seljan, 547 F.3d at 1001. Moreover, the court noted that the outbound interdiction operation was authorized by 31 U.S.C. § 5317(b), which provides that to ensure compliance with section 5316, “a customs officer may stop and search, at the border and without a search warrant, any vehicle, aircraft, or other conveyance, any envelope or other container, and any person entering or departing from the United States.” Id. The court held that aside from this statutory authority to stop and search, the government had the authority to search at the border “based on its inherent sovereign authority to protect its territorial integrity.” Id. The court reasoned that the government’s authority to conduct border searches is justified by its interest regulating the flow of persons and property across the border, which included “an obvious interest in enforcing section 5316.” Id. As such, the court concluded that the border search was not unreasonable.

The case at hand is similar to Seljan in that the customs inspectors had both statutory authority and authority under the border search doctrine to stop and search the defendant, his sister, their vehicle, and all containers in that vehicle as they were leaving the United States to ensure compliance with section 5316. No suspicion was needed to conduct the search of the purse or the pat down and, as noted earlier, the manner in which these searches were conducted was not unreasonable given that neither the search of the purse nor the pat down of the defendant was intrusive, destructive, or offensive. Even if Agent Bun did grab the purse from the juvenile’s lap and did not ask for her consent to search, that behavior was, at most, rude, but not offensively unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Likewise, the pat down of the defendant’s outer clothing, which is always done for officer safety reasons, was also not intrusive or offensive, even though the agent did not ask for the defendant’s permission to conduct a pat down.