cjenk72

I have a friend who is going to see a family member in Louisiana who is extremely ill and is flying from Oklahoma...she has a misdemeanor warrant for unpaid court costs, and her family has already purchased her ticket. Will she be able to fly without getting arrested when checking in at the airport? Does TSA check for warrants?

NewbieRunner

Welcome to FT, cjenk72!

I am moving your question to Practical Travel Safety and Security Issues.

NewbieRunner
Co-moderator, CommunityBuzz

catocony

TSA doesn't check for warrants since they are not a law enforcement agency.

alphaod

Also they don't verify ID. It's just a visual process, so there is no way to notify a law enforcement agency.

dustman81

Though she should be careful in Louisiana. If she has a run in with a cop, she could be cuffed and stuffed into the back of a cop car.

Of course, she could do the right thing and deal with the warrant so she wouldn't have to worry about it.

Often1

The larger issue has nothing to do with TSA, it has to do with any chance encounter with a law enforcement agency and that could happen for entirely chance reasons having nothing to do with her, e.g., she's a witness to something someone else does and the cops need to track her down.

BTW - It's completely erroneous information that TSA can't check warrant information. It most certainly can. Not relevant to OP's question, but it, of course checks warrant information on every Pre-Check applicant (as one of many, many examples).

If you are a friend, you will advise her that whether she does it immediately, she should soon enough get this mess behind her. These things never end well.

star166

Hi Everyone,

I just found out I have a bench warrant in CA. Failure to appear but was actually a mistake and didn't know I've had it for almost a year. I need to be in Atlanta by Friday.

Consulted with an attorney, doubtful they will be able to recall in the time/may have to show up in person and I can't miss the trip due to work reasons (indie contractor, film industry).

Sparing the details, not taking the flight isn't an option. I can't risk having an issue that would prevent me from getting on the flight so I am weighting options at the moment.

I've seen TONS of posts online about traveling with a warrant and other than not risking it and a bunch of posts saying that TSA may or may not check warrants there is little first hand information.

Has anyone flied with a warrant domestically? If so, could you relay your experience and what seemed to work (or didn't)?

I've heard other information saying fly from the next state over to limit exposure to local law enforcement data bases. Any truth to this?

Any help, greatly appreciated!

flyerCO

There's no check for a domestic flight. TSA doesn't do criminal warrant checks on passengers. Immigration will run you for warrants when returning to the country. Even then unless it's a federal warrant or major felony state warrant they won't do anything.

Dresden

First, misdemeanor warrants (or felony warrants for that matter) will not be discovered if you are traveling inside the United States and are not in contact with law enforcement. Second, misdemeanors are not usually listed in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) files because you may not be extradited for these offenses, due to the issuing agency's budget. So, once you are out of state, you are safe until you get close enough to the issuing jurisdiction for them to come get you. Most of the time, that means once you are back in the state where the warrant was issued, you can be arrested. So, go. Mind your p's and q's and get the matter handled when you can.

sebastianbm20

hey guys, so I need to travel from NJ to WA but I think I have a warrant for not paying a traffic ticket, I was looking up and I saw warrants weren't normally checked on domestic flight but then I saw they were making some changes this year? it's still safe to travel with the warrant or they'll find out?

Scifience

This seems like a very easy problem to fix: go pay your fine before travelling, and the bench warrant should go away.

sparklewit

After applying for Pre-Check this week, I learned today that I was rejected because of a Louisiana bench warrant from 12 years ago. I volunteered at a Hurricane Katrina shelter in 2005, so it would have been from then, but???
In the last 12 years I have flown countless times, rented cars, continuously insured my own cars, and had my CA driver's license run at an accident scene, all without ever being made aware of this Louisiana warrant. Unless you cause a disturbance at the airport, apparently you will be fine.
(BTW, I am researching my bench warrant now - I shall be a law abiding citizen again!)

yandosan

This seems like a very easy problem to fix: go pay your fine before travelling, and the bench warrant should go away.

Warrants can't always just be paid off. I had a Probation Violation
in Florida for A DUI and even though the stop by the cop before the ID check was totally illegal (pretextual) they extradited me next to hardcore felons in a dirty old van around 3 AM to the other county. (Maybe an attorney knows: Whatever happened to "fruit of the poison tree"?) We offered to throw a large sum of money at them to clear it up (so I didn't lose my job in another state) but they wouldn't have it. Ended up doing a month for something (1st offense DUI) that would normally have gotten me at most 1 day in jail. Weird.

Often1

Whatever caused the warrant, it will not go away until you take care of the underlying problem. Whether that is paying a fine by mail or something worse, get it taken care of.

The reason it has not likely been picked up is that nobody is looking for you. But, when you apply for a TTP, DHS runs your criminal history and the active warrant shows up. Same would have happened if you applied for a security clearance, certain licenses and the like. Why? Because somebody did look.

For others who read about these situations, it is always possible that a warrant was issued in error and that somebody other than you made a mistake. But, 99% of the time, there is something you were supposed to do and did not. Those sorts of warrants just sit there forever. Sooner or later, when there becomes a reason to run your record, the warrant shows up. That is why all of those threads on FT advising people to ignore this summons and that court order are foolish. Smallish things become major issues.

Be thankful that this occurred in the context of a Pre-Check denial and not as part of some investigation in the middle of nowhere on a holiday weekend.

Often1

There is some really bad advice in this thread. Any warrant anywhere is potentially a serious problem and can lead to being detained in custody --- what we call the hoosegow --- for at least a period of time if not longer. Often it is not about the seriousness of the offense, but that you disobeyed a court order and those are sometimes considered serious. Do not get your back up about the system. If you want to defy a court order, so be it. But, do understand that there are consequences. There are ways to challenge convictions, sometimes, but one of them is not to simply ignore.

First, the advice that misdemeanor warrants cannot be extradited from one state to another is false. It is simply that most state and local jurisdictions do not want to spend the money on extradition and therefore do not extradite. But, most enter their warrants in their state warrants system and some of those systems enter the information in NCIC. While you may not be extradited, you may be detained or arrested until it can be confirmed that you will not be arrested.

Second, some of the warrants described in this thread are "bench" warrants issued by a judge for failure to appear, pay a fine, or do something else. Not all are extradited, some are.

Third, it is unlikely that bounty hunters are out looking for you on minor charges. But, if law enforcement has a reason to run your name, the warrant may well show and you will be detained for extradition until it can be sorted (and perhaps not sorted). As the example above shows, people are sometimes dragged back in custody for things they thought were long gone.

For the specific question about traeveling to ATL for necessary business when it is impossible to have the warrant dealt with prior to travel, you have no option but to travel, so go ahead. Don;t give anyone a reason to check your record, including motor vehicle stops and you will likely be just fine. But, don't take this as a guarantee because it is not.

For others with minor things such as unpaid fines, just pay the fine. That is the easiest and quickest thing to do. Then, make certain that the warrant has been recalled and that the court has confirmation that whatever law enforcement agency it works through for the entry of warrants actually has done the entry. For even minor stuff, it may be easier and better to retain a local attorney who knows the system and how it really works, to make certain that all of this is done.

What happens to one person at one place has no bearing on what happens to another at another place.