1. United States
2. Fla.
3. Letter

I oppose The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA . The bill would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement authority to coordinate federal efforts against large-scale shoplifting. Civil libertarian groups are disturbed by legislation they say constitutes a major expansion of domestic surveillance and policing by DHS. The premise that organized retail theft is a rampant crime phenomenon, rather than a new name for the timeless petty offense of shoplifting, is disputed and controversial. In 2023, the National Retail Federation, a trade group that supports the bill and whose warnings are cited in its text, retracted a report claiming organized retail crime was responsible for 50 percent of the nearly $100 billion worth of merchandise that went missing in 2021. The true number was found to be closer to 5 percent of that sum. If you aren’t aware, a large segment of the population is extremely leery of ICE in its current iteration. I agree with this sentiment: “Given that this director will be named by ICE, an agency that has acted without any regard for the law, this is probably not the best person to make such important judgments,” ACLU senior counsel Nina Patel told The Intercept.