The FBI has asked the Local Police to send the names of people linked to drug cartels and gangs to the terrorist surveillance list of the United States government created after September 11, which could lead more Americans to the list, according to police documents seen by Reuters.
The office told the law enforcement agencies in an email on May 9 to share the names of the people who believe they are linked to eight criminal groups that President Donald Trump has labeled as foreign terrorist organizations. He also asked the agencies to share information about family members and associates of the members of the groups.
The existence of the email, which was obtained by the non -profit organization of transparency centered on national security Property of the People through a request for public records and shared with Reuters, has not been previously informed. The email was sent to agencies and groups responsible for enforcing the law, including the National Sheriff Association, which confirmed to have received it from the FBI.
The FBI refused to answer detailed questions about email, referring instead to a previous statement that said that “the surveillance list is an effective trap cable that keeps those who are involved in violent criminal acts, illicit drug trafficking and smuggling/trafficking of people.”
The surveillance list contained some 1.1 million names, including some 6,000 US citizens and permanent legal residents, in August 2024, according to a January report of the Board of Supervision of Privacy and Civil Liberties, which is the most recent federal fact available.
The change means that it is likely that local police officers see more terrorism alerts when they make traffic stops or verify a history using the database of the National Center for Information on Crimes, said the FBI in the email.
In February, the Trump government declared gangs such as MS-13, Aragua Train and the Sinaloa Cartel as foreign terrorist organizations, saying that they represent a risk to national security and economic interests.
The document, sent by a former deputy director of the FBI, said that “the agencies that have information about members of these organizations, including their relatives and associates, are obliged to share it” with the National Center for Contribution. The threat detection center led by the FBI would lead an effort to determine what names should be added.
The office also told the Local Police that he had recently added 300,000 immigration records to the database of the National Center for Crime Information Center, including people who face administrative expulsion orders from the United States.
A state office for the application of the law that helps to facilitate the exchange of intelligence between federal, state and local officials issued a newsletter at the end of July with instructions on how to send names for possible inclusion in the surveillance list, according to a copy seen by Reuters.
The defenders of civil liberties say that the United States government is sometimes based on questionable evidence to decide who to include.
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FBI seeks to add drug cartels to the terrorist surveillance list
“The United States surveillance lists system is already a nightmare notoriously prone to mistakes, swollen and due process, and this instruction raises important red flags,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security project of ACLU.
The White House and the Office of the National Intelligence Director said that the Government will use all available legal routes “to prevent terrorists from killing Americans.”
Appointing cartels and gang members as terrorists has the potential to drastically expand the number of people in the surveillance list.
“In the context of the cartels, when talking about people within the United States, the scope of the surveillance list becomes even broader due to the way drug trafficking networks develop,” said Spencer Reynolds, a former lawyer of the National Security Department who now works at the Brennan Center for Justice.
He said that it is not clear if low -level gang members who sell or transport drugs would be labeled as terrorists, even if they have no idea that their work is connected to one of the designated cartels.
Civil rights groups have expressed concern about the secret nature of the list, which can subject people to surveillance in airplanes, travel restrictions and secondary controls in airports and other entrance ports to the United States. They have also complained that the government has sometimes indicated people as gang members based on tests such as their tattoos and clothing.
A federal judge ruled in 2019 that the list violated constitutional rights to due process of certain American citizens.
“If your name appears in a police coup, that has all kinds of waterfall consequences,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project for the National Lawyers’ union.
The authorities must detail the reasonable suspicion that a person is associated with one of the designated terrorist groups before being added to the surveillance list, according to the public standards of the government. His friends and associates would not be added automatically unless the government also suspects that they are involved, although there are exceptions to that standard, said a former official familiar with the process.
The Civil Privacy Board published a report in January with recommendations on how to improve the precision and reliability of the list. Several days later, the Trump administration fired three of its four members of the Board.
“As Trump dismantles the rule of law and even points to mild dissent as threats to security, the growing terrorist surveillance lists are another obvious indicator of our decline towards an authoritarian government,” said Property of the People’s Executive Director Ryan Shapiro.
With Reuters information.
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