Letter Opposing Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025
A PDF copy of this letter can be found here.
The Honorable John Thune
Senate Majority Leader
The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Chuck Schumer
Senate Minority Leader
The Capitol
Washington, DC 20510
Re: H.R. 2853/S.1404, The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (“CORCA”)
Dear Majority Leader Thune and Minority Leader Schumer:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, American Civil Liberties Union, Legal Defense Fund, Hispanic Federation, and the undersigned organizations, we write to express our strong opposition to H.R. 2853/S.1404, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025 (CORCA) and its potential inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This legislation would federalize low-level shoplifting crimes and would extend the reach of federal criminal enforcement. CORCA lacks a meaningful definition for ‘organized retail crime’, and allows the federal government to prosecute low-level and individual shoplifting without proof of any nexus to organized retail theft. It encourages surveillance by retail entities and merges it with the expansive surveillance network of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which will disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities and immigrants, and has far reaching privacy implications for anyone visiting a retail center or public space.
CORCA Federalizes Shoplifting Crimes, Which States are Better Equipped to Address
CORCA makes several changes to federal law that would allow federal prosecutors to sweep up individual and low-level shoplifting offenses into the federal system for disproportionate sentencing and would expand the criminalization of poverty. Currently, criminal charges for violating 18 USC § 2314 (transportation of stolen goods) or § 2315 (sale or receipt of stolen goods) require the value of stolen goods in one incident to be $5000 or more. CORCA lowers this threshold significantly by allowing prosecutors to utilize an aggregate total value of $5000 or more over a 12-month period and it does not require any of the theft incidents to have a connection to organized retail theft or require a certain number of people to be involved in theft incidents. This provision in CORCA allows federal prosecutors to sweep shoplifting cases involving a single person into the federal system for prosecution. These defects in the design and text of CORCA are flaws which will have unwanted and unwarranted consequences on people at the lowest income levels in communities that have been historically underserved.
Federalizing shoplifting will only exacerbate the economic insecurity at the root of these incidents. Placing people in federal prison far from their communities, with limited opportunities for rehabilitation and job training will only create a cycle of incarceration. Because of structural bias and barriers to employment and opportunity, poverty in many cases correlates with race. Black and Brown Americans are disproportionately represented in poverty measures. CORCA’s over federalization places these same communities in increasing jeopardy for surveillance, false arrest, prosecution, and incarceration in dangerous and failing federal prisons. Retail centers should not become scenes of confrontation and death, false arrest, and government surveillance.
CORCA Expands DHS Surveillance in Retail Spaces
CORCA would greatly expand DHS’s surveillance authority through a new Organized Retail Crime Coordination Center (the Center), which is essentially a new fusion center, nominally for the purpose of addressing retail theft. For decades, the fusion of information in joint operations like this has promoted targeting of Black and Latino communities, immigrants, and people exercising their First Amendment rights. This is particularly concerning as the bill allows the federal government to share otherwise protected confidential information, requiring only approval from the director of the Center to do so.
The bill grants the Director of ICE the authority to appoint the head of the Center. Congress has never debated or authorized ICE to lead domestic law enforcement efforts against retail theft, and DHS was never intended to act as a national police force. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice already lead major theft and transnational organized crime work that the bill purportedly targets. There is no stated law enforcement rationale for preferring Homeland Security Investigations over the Department of Justice as the coordinating entity for these centers. The only discernable purpose is for the creation of an information and surveillance pipeline that would feed directly into immigration enforcement operations.
Using one of the most expansive and invasive surveillance operations in the federal government to capture data about people in retail settings is federal overreach and undermines the privacy rights of every person. CORCA greenlights the use of facial recognition technology that taps into a massive biometrics library, automatic license plate readers like FLOCK cameras, and data integration, all for local retail theft. The scale and integration of these surveillance activities have expanded dramatically in the past year as the One Big Beautiful Bill appropriated billions in surveillance technology, including $6.2 billion for border technology and surveillance. CORCA would justify turning this vast arsenal on consumers around the country.
DHS agents from ICE Homeland Security Investigations, which is named specifically in CORCA, routinely deploy facial recognition technology via a smartphone application called Mobile Fortify. The app enables DHS agents to perform facial recognition searches against a dataset reportedly containing over 200 million images and to conduct fingerprint scans directly from government-issued mobile devices. The dangers of this technology are profound. Facial recognition systems have well-documented accuracy problems, particularly in identifying people with darker skin and for features associated with Black people, Asian people, women, and transgender or nonbinary people, leading to false matches and wrongful detentions. Even if those problems were resolved, in the hands of ICE, the tools still promote racialized policing practices.
DHS has also built a system of automated license plate readers to carry out dragnet surveillance of millions of people in the U.S. by tracking their cars from the southern border to Illinois and Michigan. DHS also accesses similar nationwide networks of plate readers run by the DEA. The program is secretive: DHS has hidden from the public the full extent of these cameras’ placement, what agents consider suspicious, or the algorithms they deploy. The retail industry has itself adopted license plate readers. Some big box retailers have deployed them throughout their parking lots, feeding information into a system of tens of thousands of commercial cameras nationwide, such as FLOCK cameras, that ICE can access indirectly through willing local police. DHS has systematically integrated data and resources including vehicle and driver information, racially biased gang databases, healthcare data, utility bills, and more into a vast surveillance apparatus. By bringing all of this data and personnel together, CORCA would only speed up and facilitate the overreach of federal government surveillance.
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In conclusion, CORCA is a continuation of the harmful and ineffective strategies that have led to the shameful mass incarceration of Black and Brown people and perpetuates a history of structural racism and anti-Blackness in this country. This approach has failed the nation. Congress should endeavor to create public safety by investing in the actual communities suffering from violence, implementing proven crime prevention strategies, and investing in the resources and systems that make all communities thrive. True safety comes from equitable access to quality education, health care, affordable housing, and economic opportunities.
We call upon the Senate to reject this legislation, and any other federal criminalization legislation that would expand surveillance and incarceration rates and instead, pass legislation that protects civil rights and civil liberties. CORCA should not be included in the National Defense Authorization Act because it does not have any national security nexus and states and local communities are actually leading the way to create local systems that simultaneously reduce crime and incarceration. We look forward to working with Congress to serve the national interest and create a more just and equitable society.
Sincerely,
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
American Civil Liberties Union
Legal Defense Fund
Hispanic Federation
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
NAACP
National Action Network (NAN)
National Council of Negro Women
National Urban League