A little-known bill could give ICE access to Americans’ private data

Just four months ago, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar loudly vowed to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountable for its lawlessness. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin condemned ICE’s “ruthless” enforcement raids in Chicago last year.

This Video Is Trending Right Now →

For many Democrats in Congress, calling out the cruelty and impunity of ICE has become a common refrain. Why, then, are some of these same representatives now co-sponsoring a bill that would give ICE new power to harvest Americans’ personal information?

Congressional Republicans are racing against the legislative clock to pass a mountain of major legislation before an extended August recess, but razor-thin voting margins and unpopular bills have rendered Capitol Hill even more dysfunctional than usual. 

Faced with the prospect of dozens of controversial votes on President Donald Trump’s agenda, GOP leaders are instead cramming their most controversial bills into this year’s must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. 

For a GOP already struggling with sky-high unpopularity, the less voters see of its policies, the better.

Among the worst offenders is the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, which hides a historic power grab by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and ICE in a bill so bland that 144 House Democrats actually supported it in a roll-call vote back in May. 

More than a dozen Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring the bill, including Klobuchar and Durbin. Senate Democrats’ support for CORCA has shocked immigration and civil liberties advocates, especially after Democratic lawmakers shut down DHS for 76 days by repeatedly voting against a funding bill that gave $70 billion in additional funding to ICE. The bill’s Democratic co-sponsors include other vocal ICE critics who are also considering possible 2028 presidential runs, including Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner. 

“It is inexcusable and inexplicable to claim to want to rein in ICE and then vote to empower their abusive practices,” said Insha Rahman, president of the Vera Institute of Justice, a research and policy organization focused on criminal justice reform. “There’s an obvious contradiction between Senate Democrats shutting down the government to protest abusive immigration practices and voting for a bill that will expand ICE’s surveillance powers.”

CORCA empowers DHS to collect sensitive personal information from retail shoppers accused of theft and share that information with agencies including ICE, which can then use the data as it sees fit, including for deportation purposes. Worse still, CORCA allows DHS to circumvent constitutional safeguards by deputizing retailers like Home Depot to do the data collection for them. That has legal experts warning of a civil liberties disaster in the making.

“This is a surveillance bill, not an attempt to address retail theft,” Rahman said. “The bill creates a system for expanding government access to consumer data without providing meaningful transparency or accountability. Americans deserve to know what information is being collected, who can access it and what safeguards exist to prevent abuse.”

CORCA also authorizes DHS to create a new “central coordination center” with leadership appointed by the acting ICE director. The center would connect law enforcement agencies and private retailers and “assist state and local law enforcement” with criminal investigations, even though retail theft has traditionally been a matter for local police — not the feds, and certainly not ICE. Under CORCA, federal agents can even be dispatched to take over “loss prevention activities” previously handled by large chain retailers, shifting the cost of shoplifting prevention from companies like Walmart to the American taxpayer.

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group that spent more than $8.2 million lobbying Congress in 2024 and is a major advocate of CORCA, called the bill a “priority issue” for its influential members. Retail giant Home Depot ironically referred to it as a way to combat “theft for greed.” With the Trump administration offering to pick up the bill for retailers’ loss prevention, it’s no surprise that the nation’s largest retailers and their biggest lobbyist are pushing hard for CORCA’s inclusion in the NDAA.