Sponsors
The bill increases congressional transparency and oversight of watchlist policy (improving the ability to review and correct practices that affect civil liberties) at the cost of potential national-security exposure, heightened privacy/leak risks, and added administrative burdens on agencies.
Congressional oversight committees (and therefore the public) will get timely notice of material changes, access to guidance, and annual aggregate data about U.S. persons on the terrorist watchlist so lawmakers can better review policies that affect investigations and civil liberties.
Policymakers will receive organization-level affiliation counts (e.g., by terrorist organization) and agency-level nomination information in aggregate, improving the intelligence picture available to legislators without releasing individual identities.
Committees can obtain all guidance governing watchlist use, enabling targeted review and corrective action of agency practices that nominate U.S. persons and potentially safeguarding civil liberties.
Providing detailed policy guidance, summaries, and aggregate counts to Congress risks revealing sensitive investigative or operational methods and could hinder counterterrorism and law-enforcement effectiveness.
Expanded disclosures (even aggregated) increase privacy and leak risks—raising chances that watchlist information could be misused or that individuals identified indirectly could suffer harms.
New reporting and document-production requirements will impose administrative burdens and costs on the FBI and other agencies, diverting staff time and resources from operational priorities.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires the FBI to notify Congress of material watchlist changes, produce watchlist guidance on request, and submit annual reports on U.S. persons on the terrorist watchlist.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Joaquin Castro · Last progress December 10, 2025
Requires the FBI Director to notify designated congressional committees whenever there is a material change to the Terrorist Screening Dataset or the Transnational Organized Crime Actor Detection Program watchlist, to provide watchlist guidance on request, and to deliver two annual reports (first due January 31, 2026) with detailed counts and breakdowns of United States persons on the terrorist watchlist. The reports must include total counts, no-fly and selectee counts for U.S. persons, counts of U.S. persons added under exceptions to reasonable-suspicion screening, counts by suspected organization affiliation, and which federal agencies nominated those persons. Does not create new funding, change underlying criminal or surveillance statutes, or alter substantive watchlist standards; it adds notification, document-production, and reporting requirements intended to increase congressional oversight of watchlist policies and U.S. person entries.