1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

As your constituent, I urge you to vote NO on S. 1404, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (CORCA), and to do everything in your power to oppose its passage. CORCA would dramatically expand the Department of Homeland Security's role in domestic law enforcement by creating a new coordination center housed within ICE, led by an appointee of the ICE director, and staffed by Homeland Security Investigations agents whose mission is transnational crime – not neighborhood policing. The bill authorizes sweeping collection and sharing of Americans' personal data across federal, state, local, and private-sector entities whenever "operationally necessary" – a term the bill never defines. It contains no standards for how personal information is collected, stored, or deleted, no mechanism for individuals to learn whether their data was taken, and no way to challenge those records. Its seven-year sunset is illusory: nothing requires DHS to dismantle data systems or delete the information it gathers. I am especially alarmed by how CORCA interacts with existing law. Because non-citizens merely accused of shoplifting can already be detained without a bond hearing, embedding ICE within local retail-theft enforcement will escalate racial profiling and funnel people into detention on nothing more than a store employee's accusation. It will also pressure local governments, through federal grant leverage, to abandon sanctuary policies their communities chose democratically. DHS has spent the past year seizing data from Medicaid, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration, and surveilling protesters and legal observers. Congress should not reward that record with a new domestic intelligence apparatus. Please vote NO on S. 1404!