It happens to the best of us. You arrive at the airport, head to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) checkpoint and place your bag on the conveyor belt. Moments later, an agent asks, “Is this your bag?” before letting you know something inside it is not permitted. It happened to me last year (I forgot a water bottle), despite being an avid traveler who passes through airport checkpoints dozens of times yearly. It’s interactions like these that result in the TSA accumulating large amounts of discarded belongings, from perfume bottles, aerosols or liquids over the TSA limit to sharp objects, knives and flammables. But what does TSA do with confiscated items?
A few things, actually. But it all depends on what type of belongings are handed over. “When you travel, it’s already kind of a hectic time, and you forget things,” says Dan Velez, a TSA spokesperson for the New England region. “It’s typical for people to forget what they actually have in their carry-on bag.” There are a number of items banned from airplane travel that end up being handed over at checkpoints across the country. But what happens to those belongings? And is there any hope of getting them back? Here’s what you need to know.
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What happens to items confiscated by the TSA?
The first thing to know is that the agency doesn’t technically seize anything. Yes, there are strict TSA carry-on rules and other items banned from air travel. But a TSA agent’s job is not to confiscate those items—it’s simply to identify items prohibited from flying and let you know that they can’t pass through security (at least in your carry-on bag).
From there, Velez says, you have a few options. You can:
- Surrender it to agents at the checkpoint.\
- Check your bag with the item(s) inside.
- Take it back to your car or give the item to a non-traveling companion.
“They surrender the items to us in order to continue,” Velez explains. “Say you have a bottle of shampoo, and it’s eight ounces and in your carry-on bag. We will let you know you’re over the limit with your liquid. You can keep your shampoo bottle, but you’re not going to go through to the secure side [with it].” If you want to board your flight, you’ll have to surrender the shampoo bottle or find something to do with it.
How many items are confiscated by TSA every year?
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As you might expect, travelers surrender a lot of stuff to TSA agents, considering the agency screens 1.4 million checked bags and 5.5 million carry-on bags daily. Because there are a number of categories of prohibited items, it’s hard to know just how many items the agency ends up with, whether it’s bottles of water and sunscreen that customers discard, items lost and found at checkpoints or knives and other items that can’t fly.
In general, these are items that are in travelers’ carry-on bags that TSA agents find. The traveler must surrender these in order to board their flights. In most cases, Velez says, the excuse agents get is that the traveler simply forgot the prohibited item was in their bag.
There is, however, one category of items the TSA keeps very close track of: firearms found in carry-on bags. This number has been sharply on the rise. In 2022, the TSA found a record 6,542 firearms at 262 airports nationally. As of summer 2023, the agency was on a similar pace, with 3,251 found during the first half of the year.
What are the most commonly confiscated items at the airport?
Liquids—things like bottled water, shampoo, soda, alcohol, soap and sunscreen—in bottles larger than 3.4 ounces are by far the most commonly surrendered items at the airport security check, according to the TSA.
Other commonly surrendered items include pocketknives, multi-tools and keychain knives. These are items that many travelers regularly carry and might not think about before heading to the airport.
What happens to illegal items, such as firearms or drugs?
Packing certain items in your bags can land you in trouble. Namely, packing a gun or explosive in your carry-on bag can land you in quite a bit of trouble. Even for concealed carry permit holders, guns are prohibited at checkpoints, in the secure area of an airport and on board commercial aircraft (you can put guns in a checked bag, provided you meet strict rules for properly packing and securing the weapon and any ammunition).
If one of these items is found in your carry-on bag, the TSA will hold it and contact local law enforcement to perform further inspection. It’s then up to local law enforcement to decide what happens to your property and you, as it relates to any potential criminal charges. The TSA could also impose a civil penalty of up to $14,950 and eliminate your TSA PreCheck eligibility for five years.
When it comes to drugs, the TSA does not specifically search for them. However, the agency does have to report potential violations to law enforcement. It gets a bit more complicated when it comes to possessions such as marijuana (including medical marijuana), which is legal in some states, but not in others (or federally, where it remains illegal).
The TSA lists medical marijuana as an item that can be packed in a carry-on bag, though there are special instructions. “TSA’s screening procedures are focused on security and are designed to detect potential threats to aviation and passengers,” the agency explains. “Accordingly, TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance is discovered during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to a law enforcement officer.” As such, whether you’d ultimately get in trouble would depend on the laws wherever you are (and, perhaps, wherever you’re flying).
What are some of the weirdest items confiscated by TSA agents?
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Although sunscreen bottles and hair products are the more common items surrendered to TSA agents, they’ve also made some much stranger discoveries. These discoveries made their “Top 10 Catches of 2022.”
- Cash stuffed into soiled crutches
- Inert grenade
- Cattle prods packed in a guitar case
- A gun or gun parts found inside a PlayStation, an arm sling, raw chicken and even peanut butter jars
- Drugs stuffed into hair scrunchies
- A knife hidden inside a laptop
- Fentanyl inside candy wrappers
Can you get confiscated items back?
Once you choose (again, voluntarily) to surrender a possession at a TSA checkpoint, is there a way to get it back? The short answer is no, Velez says. So what does TSA do with these items? When travelers surrender items, agents alert them that they likely won’t see them again. (Some airports do offer a mailing station near the metal detectors, so you can pay to mail small items back to your home, rather than surrendering them.)
The government has strict rules it must follow for disposing of surrendered property, according to the TSA. Guns, weapons, hazardous materials or anything deemed illegal are turned over to local law enforcement. Forbidden liquids are immediately disposed of. All other items are either turned over to state agencies or kept by the TSA to be disposed of through sales, destruction or donations to charity.
“We collect that stuff for anywhere from one to three months, and then a state surplus store will come by. We give all the stuff that was surrendered to the state surplus store, and they auction it off,” Velez says. You can try searching for your discarded property via GovDeals, where some state agencies sell surplus goods via a bidding sale—but it’s hardly a foolproof method, and you may have to pay a few bucks to get your items back.
Any profit from TSA sales of confiscated items goes to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and into a general fund used to help pay off the U.S. national debt.
What kinds of confiscated items can you currently buy?
If you log onto the surplus site GovDeals.com, you can find all sorts of items up for bid—some of which (like copy machines) clearly came from offices or government facilities. But some were previously surrendered at an airport.
For instance, there’s a listing for nine pounds of “assorted nail clippers and knives,” with bids starting at $2. There’s a whole shipping container full of toys, many of which appear to be toy guns, water guns and similarly shaped items. One look here will give you a sense of just how much stuff the agency accumulates at these checkpoints.
How can you avoid having items confiscated?
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Your best bet is to study up on the rules of airplane travel.
- When you pack, start with an empty suitcase. That way, there are no surprise items that turn up in your bag.
- Remember the 3-1-1 rule for liquids in carry-on bags. Liquids must be less than 3.4 ounces. They must be placed in one clear, resealable quart-size plastic bag. And one such bag is allowed per traveler.
- Get to the airport early enough. If you happen to have an item in your bag that isn’t permitted, you have time to take it back to your car.
- When traveling during the holidays, don’t wrap gifts before flying (the TSA may have to unwrap them).
- Don’t ever pack firearms, knives or weapons in your carry-on bag.
Ultimately, this due diligence will not only help you, but the travelers around you too. “Anytime you have two, three, four people in front of you, and they have a prohibited item, it does slow down the line,” Velez says. “So that’s unfortunate. We try to resolve those incidents as quickly as possible.”
Additional reporting by Charlotte Hilton Andersen.
About the expert
- Dan Velez is the press secretary for the New England region of the Transportation Security Administration, handling matters in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
Sources:
- Transportation Security Administration: “TSA breaks yet another record nationally for firearm discoveries in 2022”
- Transportation Security Administration: “Travel Checklist”
- TSA on YouTube: “TSA’s Top 10 Catches 2022”
- Transportation Security Administration: “Medical Marijuana”
- Transportation Security Administration: “Transporting Firearms and Ammunition”
- GovDeals: “Approx. 9 lbs. of Assorted Nail Clippers/Etc.”
