WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats temporarily blocked the National Defense Authorization Act on July 14, delaying consideration of President Donald Trump’s Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act, a measure critics say would dramatically expand federal surveillance powers, increase data sharing between private companies and the government, and broaden the domestic law enforcement authority of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
More than 130 organizations, nonprofits and advocates, including the Vera Institute of Justice, the Immigrant Defense Project and the American Civil Liberties Union, formed a coalition to write a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the rest of the Senate, urging them to vote against the NDAA and CORCA. The letter was published July 9, 2026.
“The bill encourages extensive information sharing between DHS and private corporations, including retailers and transportation companies,” the letter states. “This provision risks enabling a vast public-private surveillance network in which personal data would flow into federal law enforcement systems via veiled corporate agreements without constitutional safeguards. Such arrangements raise serious concerns about government misuse of commercially collected data for surveillance purposes, leading to racial profiling and targeting noncitizens in retail environments.”
On May 12, 2026, CORCA passed the U.S. House of Representatives. According to Congress, its objective is to expand federal efforts to reduce “organized retail and supply chain” crimes, including “interstate transportation of stolen property, the sale or receipt of stolen goods, or theft from an interstate or foreign shipment that is committed by, in coordination with, or at the instruction of an organization.”
Those opposed to CORCA have referred to it as a “Trojan horse bill,” according to a press statement from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization. They argue that it would use consumers’ data, facial recognition technology and other surveillance tools to expand monitoring and tracking.
The Vera Institute of Justice said this tactic would further aid ICE’s “indiscriminate enforcement agenda.”
“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,” the letter states. “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.”
ICE previously was given access to Medicaid recipients’ data, including race and home addresses, according to an Associated Press report published in July 2025. The report said the data-sharing agreement caused widespread fear among immigrant communities, senior citizens, caregivers and others.
More recently, ICE agents killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who lived in Maine, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who lived in Texas, even though neither man was the target of the enforcement operations, according to The Guardian.
Guerrero was 52, from Mexico, and had lived in the United States for 35 years. According to The Guardian, he was “close to getting his immigration status.” Salgado Araujo, 26, from Colombia, was killed in front of his wife and young daughter.
The coalition maintains that if CORCA is enacted, civil liberties and constitutional rights will be undermined and more civilians will be threatened by what it describes as the bill’s “overbroad” language.
“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,” the letter states. “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.”
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