Newly passed legislation strengthens the authority of airport security officers to conduct vehicle inspections in designated zones and carry out arrests without warrant.
The Airports Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2026 formally empowers approved staff to stop and visually examine vehicles, and to detain, restrict access or arrest anyone who obstructs them.
Non-compliance carries a penalty of up to a CI$5,000 fine, six months imprisonment or both.
The bill also establishes “reasonable grounds for suspicion” to conduct physical searches without warrant if the vehicle or its occupants present “a risk or threat to airport safety or security” or criminal conduct is suspected.
Infrastructure minister Jay Ebanks reassured the public that the expanded inspection authority would not be invasive but was driven by international compliance requirements.
“It’s nowhere near where people are going to have to get out of their vehicles and physically go in,” Ebanks said during an interview on Radio Cayman on 8 May.
“I mean, if it gets to that far where someone finds that there’s a threat, that’s where they have to call the police.”
He said one contributing issue is the location of the airport drop-off points at Cayman’s airports.
Under Air Safety Support International standards, these should be at least 30 metres from a terminal’s front entrance – but they do not currently comply with this standard
“These are things that we know we should have had, but we’ve never done,” he said on the ‘For the Record’ programme.
The long-term solution, he said, is a redesign of the entrance road and parking layout to achieve the required distance, with multiple design options already under review.
Once that infrastructure change is made, the inspection requirement will be significantly reduced, he said.
Speaking in parliament on 29 April, Attorney General Sam Bulgin said much of the authority established in the amendments already existed under the Airports Authority Act and the new amendments had been drafted for transparency.
He defended the inspection powers as necessary to promote public safety.
“The bill is a very responsive piece of legislation by the government to an ever-increasing erratic and unpredictable world, where we see copycats every day… We need to be proactive,” Bulgin said.
“The human rights that we so cherish, they are not absolute… We have to agree to sacrifice some of our civil liberties in the interest of public safety.”
Regarding the definition of “reasonable grounds” under the legislation, Bulgin said that could not be “overly prescriptive”.
“What constitutes a reasonable ground is going to be informed by the facts of each case because the state of mind of the person is informed by location, movement, intelligence, among other things,” Bulgin said.
