Durbin: FBI Planning to Allow Limited Racial Profiling

According to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the FBI has prepared, but not made public, new guidelines allowing federal law enforcement officers to employ racial profiling in national security investigations. In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Sen. Dick Durbin calls on the Justice Department to both revise the FBI guidelines and reveal them to the American people.

In his letter, Sen. Durbin writes that the new FBI guidelines state, “Federal law enforcement officers who are protecting national security … may consider race, ethnicity and other relevant factors to the extent permitted by our laws and the Constitution.”

However, notes Durbin, the same guidelines state that in cases of “routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions,” like traffic stops, “Federal law enforcement officers may not use race or ethnicity to any degree, except that officers may rely on race and ethnicity in a specific suspect description.” The guidelines go on to state, “Racial profiling in law enforcement is not merely wrong, but also ineffective.”

“These guidelines would permit FBI surveillance of innocent Americans with no suspicion and on the basis of their race, religion or national origin,” wrote Durbin. “These guidelines will hinder the FBI’s efforts to protect our national security and threaten the constitutional rights of American citizens.”

In his letter, Durbin calls on the Justice Department to amend the new guidelines to disallow the use of racial profiling in all FBI activities.

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