* Press release…

Law enforcement organizations and retail industry leaders – including Amazon, The Home Depot, Ulta Beauty, American Eagle Outfitters, UPS and DHL – are calling on Congress to advance the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act as part of the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The legislation, led by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), was filed as an amendment to the NDAA as part of a bipartisan package offered by Grassley and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to reduce violent crime.

The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act would establish a multi-agency response to organized retail crime, which affects American consumers and businesses nationwide. The legislation would create a centralized task force in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to combat organized retail crime, while establishing new tools to recover stolen goods and enhance coordination between retail industry representatives and law enforcement.

The legislation would create the Organized Retail and Supply Chain Crime Coordination Center, which would be under the Department of Homeland Security. The center’s director would be appointed by the Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

* More than 125 organizations, including several in Illinois, have banded together to oppose inserting the legislation into the “must-pass National Defense Authorization Act”…

This legislation would dramatically expand the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) role in domestic law enforcement, authorizing sweeping new authority to collect, analyze, and share Americans’ personal data without meaningful civil liberties safeguards, adequate oversight, or accountability mechanisms should DHS abuse this power.

Congress should not expand the footprint of DHS, which has already demonstrated it cannot be trusted with expanded surveillance authority. Over the past year alone, the agency has obtained sensitive personal data from Medicaid, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, private data brokers, police departments, tech companies, and more. It has spent millions on intrusive surveillance tools tracking the movements and locations of private citizens, capturing that information in massive databases and secret watchlists used to surveil protesters and legal observers. DHS has operated far beyond its original mandate, and CORCA would only reward this pattern of overreach with even greater power.

They go on to say that the proposal is “dangerously overbroad,” would “quietly construct a massive public-private surveillance network,” would deepen “DHS’s influence over state and local policing through grants and open-ended cooperation agreements,” and would entrench DHS and ICE in local law enforcement…

The bill positions Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) as the hub of a new national intelligence apparatus focused on organized retail crime, whose leader will be appointed by the director of ICE. This further collapses the distinction between domestic policing and immigration enforcement. Although once independent, HSI is now forced to work with ICE on removal operations, and HSI agents say their connection to ICE has undermined their ability to do investigative work. HSI is intended to investigate transnational crime, and while it has made recent forays into domestic retail theft, Congress should be incredibly wary of permanently authorizing this expansion.

Conclusion…

Congress should not respond to concerns about retail theft by handing more power to an agency that has skirted accountability and has a documented record of surveillance overreach. Effective solutions must be carefully targeted, address the root causes of theft, support impacted workers and businesses, and uphold everyone’s constitutional rights. CORCA does none of this.

* ACLU Illinois…

It is clear that Congress simply cannot — in good conscience — give any additional power to the Department of Homeland Security. Time after time, DHS has used the billions of taxpayer dollars it has been appropriated to terrorize neighborhoods in communities across the country and across Illinois. Now we are being asked to entrust it with enormous surveillance authorities to combat retail theft. DHS officers have abused power, using violence against people across the country, including last week in Houston and just this week in Maine. In each case, DHS has issued statements that bear little relationship to the truth. Now is the time to rein in this reckless agency, not extend it more authority.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who has been outspoken about ICE and DHS, is a co-sponsor.