Advertisements Urge Senate to Guarantee Homeland Security Legislation Not Become a "Bill of Wrongs"

Advertisements Urge Senate to Guarantee Homeland Security Legislation Not Become a "Bill of Wrongs"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON - In full-page ads in influential inside-the-Beltway publications, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates today urged the Senate to keep the controversial legislation that would establish the Homeland Security Department from becoming a "bill of wrongs" that threatens the Constitution and the basic rights guaranteed to everyone in America.

The ad appeared in Monday's Congressional Quarterly Daily Monitor and Congress Daily and featured the headline: "The Homeland Was Established With a Bill of Rights. Please Don't Secure It With a Bill of Wrongs." Signers included the ACLU, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Immigration Law Center, National Council of La Raza, Open Society Policy Institute and People for the American Way.

"The Homeland Security Department legislation in the Senate will do serious damage to the guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. "Congress needs to pass a bill that forbids citizen-spies, racial profiling and civil rights abuses by federal authorities."

The ACLU and its allies decided to run the ads last week after Congressional negotiations increased the likelihood that the legislation establishing the cabinet-level Homeland Security Department would contain unacceptable infringements on civil rights.

There are three competing visions of the Homeland Security Department on Capitol Hill. One mirrors the President's plan and simply fails to ensure basic rights. The second would deal less harshly with organized labor, the crux of a dispute that has delayed the bill for several weeks now. The third bill, backed by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), protects labor but falls short in other important areas.

For example, the Democratic version does not contain some of the provisions that the House-passed bill does, such as language to prevent the implementation of the controversial Operation TIPS program and a prohibition against national ID cards.

Today's ad demands that any Homeland Security bill contain five basic civil liberties protections. These include the hiring of a high-level privacy and civil rights officer within the new department, a provision forbidding the notorious Operation TIPS program, a repeal of a recent law allowing the Customs Service to use racial profiling in its enforcement and better protections for immigrants, especially children.

The ad is attached to this document: