REPORT: Profiling at Airports, Border Will Continue
Per multiple news reports, the U.S. Department of Justice will announce highly-anticipated reforms to their policies on racial profiling in the coming days. Unfortunately, while these new regulations will place much-needed restrictions on profiling by federal law enforcement officers, they do not go nearly far enough. The new regulations will allegedly allow the use of profiling based upon religion and national origin by the Department of Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection. Further, the new prohibitions on racial profiling would not apply to local law enforcement agencies.
While the DOJ has taken steps to address profiling by law enforcement in the United States, we are dismayed by their unwillingness to restrict profiling by the agencies with whom our community, as well as other Americans, interact with at our nation’s airports and borders.
The reported exemptions to the new policy will allow the government to engage in practices that may single out particular communities for additional suspicion, including profiling at the airports, at or near the borders, and allow for mapping of local communities. These exemptions limit the potential effectiveness of the prohibition on profiling and should be closed.
The reported policy represents an improvement to the status quo, but does not fully address the effects of profiling and its impact on Sikh, Latino, and Muslim Americans’ daily lives. The policies proposed by the White House to be issued by the Department of Justice wrongly sends the message that groups of Americans, due to their religion and national origin, are inherently suspicious.
READ: Past SALDEF Articles in 2014 on the Repercussions of Profiling:
Huffington Post: America Can’t Breathe Huffington Post: “Mohammed Raghead” and Fighting the Anti-Turban Bias that Plagues Our Land of Liberty Medium: When Bias Kills Talking Points Memo: Suspicious Citizens in the Land of Justice and Liberty Talking Points Memo: FOX Panelist Wrongly Defends Muslim Profiling with WWII Japanese Camps