{"id":46415,"date":"2022-02-15T18:14:48","date_gmt":"2022-02-15T23:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/issues\/discriminatory-profiling"},"modified":"2025-06-17T16:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T20:41:37","slug":"discriminatory-profiling","status":"publish","type":"issue","link":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/issues\/national-security\/discriminatory-profiling","title":{"rendered":"Discriminatory Profiling"},"parent":46591,"menu_order":6,"template":"","class_list":["post-46415","issue","type-issue","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"featured-image":210791,"intro":"\u201cNational security\u201d has long been used to justify the unconstitutional profiling of, and discrimination against, Muslim, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalized communities. The ACLU fights for the individuals and communities harmed by the government\u2019s discriminatory practice of using race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or ethnicity as a basis for suspicion or investigation.","what-you-need-to-know":[{"highlighted":"2014:","description":"Departments of Justice and Homeland Security adopt anti-discrimination policies that actually allow federal law enforcement to profile people based on race, religion, ethnicity, and national origin in certain contexts.  "},{"highlighted":"84%","description":"A 2021 ACLU of Michigan report finds that although people of Latin American origin make up only 16.8% of Michigan\u2019s foreign-born population, 84% of all noncitizens apprehended by Border Patrol there were originally from Latin America. "},{"highlighted":"November 21, 2022:","description":"President Biden has ordered the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to decide whether and how to revise their anti-discrimination policies by November 21, 2022. This is their chance to fully ban biased profiling.  "}],"promo":{"description":"","button":"","url":""},"faq":{"description":"","faq-items":null},"featured-stories":[{"image":40378,"title":"A Chinese American Scientist and His Family Are Battling the FBI\u2019s Profiling in Court","content-type":"news_and_commentary","last-updated":"20210402","description":"We must secure justice for Professor Xi and other scientists who have long been harmed by the FBI\u2019s discriminatory profiling and surveillance.","url":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/a-chinese-american-scientist-and-his-family-are-battling-the-fbis-profiling-in-court"}],"latest-stories":[{"image":47375,"title":"Customs and Border Protection is Singling Out Muslim Travelers for Invasive Religious Questioning","type":"news_and_commentary","url":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/religious-liberty\/customs-and-border-protection-is-singling-out-muslim-travelers-for-invasive-religious-questioning"},{"image":40408,"title":"I Refused to Become an FBI Informant, and the Government Put Me on the No Fly List","type":"news_and_commentary","url":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/i-refused-to-become-an-fbi-informant-and-the-government-put-me-on-the-no-fly-list"},{"image":27514,"title":"A Secret CBP Team is Targeting and Detaining Innocent Travelers. We\u2019re Suing.","type":"news_and_commentary","url":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/immigrants-rights\/a-secret-cbp-team-is-targeting-and-detaining-innocent-travelers-were-suing"},{"image":44286,"title":"How the FBI Spied on Orange County Muslims And Attempted to Get Away With It","type":"news_and_commentary","url":"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/how-the-fbi-spied-on-orange-county-muslims-and-attempted-to-get-away-with-it"}],"whats-at-stake":{"title":"What's at Stake","description":"The FBI, CBP, TSA, and other federal law enforcement agencies have long engaged in discriminatory and unconstitutional profiling of people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized communities, including those engaged in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/government-spying-you-aclu-releases-new-evidence\">First Amendment-protected activities. <\/a>The people that federal agencies target have mostly been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/press-releases\/leaked-fbi-documents-raise-concerns-about-targeting-black-people-under-black-identi-1\">Black civil rights activists<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/other\/factsheet-nypd-muslim-surveillance-program\">Muslim<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclumich.org\/sites\/default\/files\/field_documents\/100_mile_zone_report-updated.pdf\">Brown<\/a> communities, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/racial-justice\/from-japanese-american-incarceration-to-the-china-initiative-discrimination-against-aapi-communities-must-end\">Asian Americans<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/press-releases\/new-documents-show-fbi-targeting-environmental-and-animal-rights-groups-activities\">animal rights and environmental rights activists,<\/a> and groups the government views as having \u201cunpopular\u201d or controversial beliefs. As a result, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/government-spying-you-aclu-releases-new-evidence\">people are wrongly and secretly surveilled, investigated, prosecuted, or placed on federal watchlists.<\/a><b> <\/b>\r\n\r\nBiased federal policing falsely stigmatizes people who aren\u2019t even suspected of actual wrongdoing, as well as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/issues\/national-security\/discriminatory-profiling\/nationwide-anti-mosque-activity\">entire communities.<\/a> Using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/how-the-fbi-spied-on-orange-county-muslims-and-attempted-to-get-away-with-it\">the color of someone\u2019s skin<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/press-releases\/muslim-americans-sue-border-and-immigration-officials-over-illegal-religious\">religion they practice<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/a-chinese-american-scientist-and-his-family-are-battling-the-fbis-profiling-in-court\">where they were born<\/a> as a basis for suspicion should be left in the history books, where it belongs.\r\n\r\nThis type of biased profiling occurs in large part because the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which are the country\u2019s main federal law enforcement agencies, have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/perversity-profiling\">anti-discrimination policies<\/a> that actually permit discrimination. Although these departments say they recognize profiling is unjust, ineffective, and a waste of resources, they nevertheless permit it in the broad and vaguely defined categories of national security, intelligence-gathering, and at the border \u2014 where we\u2019ve seen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclumich.org\/en\/publications\/borders-long-shadow\">discriminatory targeting<\/a> often occur.\r\n\r\nThe harmful practices can also spread to state and local law enforcement. Federally-funded partnerships between federal, state, and local law enforcement, such as FBI-led <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu-or.org\/en\/news\/keeping-portland-out-joint-terrorism-task-force-0\">Joint Terrorism Task Forces<\/a> and DHS-led <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/privacy-technology\/twitter-cuts-fusion-spy-centers-access-social-media\">Fusion Centers<\/a>, collect and share substantial amounts of personal data about individuals and have come under criticism and scrutiny for bias-infused reporting, analysis, and investigations, and for their lack of meaningful civil rights, liberties, and privacy safeguards.\r\n\r\nThe ACLU has taken a multi-faceted approach to challenging discriminatory federal law enforcement policies, including litigation on behalf of Americans subjected to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/news\/national-security\/womans-endless-ordeal-shows-how-watchlisting-system\"> biased<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/press-releases\/wrongly-prosecuted-chinese-american-scientist-moves-forward-new-complaint-against\">unlawful surveillance,<\/a> advocacy with Congress and federal agencies for comprehensive anti-discrimination policies, as well as raising awareness of the corrosive effect of discriminatory profiling on affected communities. We will keep fighting for systematic change and legislation that prohibits biased profiling without exceptions for national and border security, in order to protect communities that have for so long been wrongly targeted and harmed."},"actions":"","drupal-id":147,"is_hidden_issue":""},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>American Civil Liberties Union<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cNational security\u201d has long been used to justify the unconstitutional profiling of, and discrimination against, Muslim, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalized communities. The ACLU fights for the individuals and communities harmed by the government\u2019s discriminatory practice of using race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or ethnicity as a basis for suspicion or investigation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Discriminatory Profiling | American Civil Liberties Union\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cNational security\u201d has long been used to justify the unconstitutional profiling of, and discrimination against, Muslim, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalized communities. 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