People carrying ca$h whilst traveling!?
The nerve!
People can obviously take cash on trips...however, anything over a certain amount (I believe it's either 5k or 10k) needs to be declared...and will sometimes get additional scrutiny and seized if the person is going to a "nation of interest"
For instance, if I have a duffel bag with $15k in it, and I was going to Columbia (even if I declared it) that would understandably be suspicious.
Per the article:
Federal officials say TSA officers flagged approximately $340 million (approximately €293 million) in outbound cash in 2024, followed by nearly $350 million (approximately €302 million) more in 2025, all departing from MSP on international flights. The money was frequently carried by a limited number of repeat couriers, with individual trips sometimes involving seven-figure sums. Despite the alarming totals, many travelers had completed required customs declarations, limiting immediate enforcement options.
Seven-figure sums being transported by "repeat couriers" should throw up some red flags.
I know the gut reaction of some people will be "Trump and some of his bigoted followers are saying bad things about Somalis, so we need to give absolutely every benefit of the doubt and inject every bit of plausible deniability we can"... but the reality is, that shouldn't trump common sense.
Common sense dictates that nobody is spending that kind of money on repeat weekend getaways to Mogadishu. If someone's got $40k in a duffel bag, you could buy 2-3 houses for that price down there.
"Someone got a government grant or federal assistance for X, pocketed the cash, and is now transferring it back down to their home country" is far more plausible than "Honey, pack your bags, we're going on a high end 3-day trip to war torn Somalia for the weekend, I'm brining $20k in cash so we can really live it up while we're down there"
But I think there's a better way to catch people in the act of wrongdoing here...
If
Joe Smith goes to a country (that's notoriously cheap in terms of pricing) with thousands of dollars of cash, and comes back with no cash, require some sort of itemization... make them explain where the money went.
Trying to spend that kind of money in Somalia would be like Brewsters millions scenario, where a person would actually have a hard time spending that kind of cash in legitimate ways.
