Sponsor
Joaquin Castro
Representative · D-TX
The bill increases congressional transparency and accountability over terrorist‑watchlist practices and provides useful aggregate data for oversight and policy, but it raises operational security and privacy risks and imposes administrative burdens on federal agencies.
Congress (and through it state and local governments and the public) will receive earlier notice and annual data about watchlist policies and how many U.S. persons are listed, improving legislative oversight and accountability of federal surveillance practices.
Congressional oversight committees can obtain all guidance governing watchlist use on request, enabling targeted review of procedures that affect investigations and civil liberties.
The FBI will track and summarize material policy changes (including criteria for adding/removing persons), which helps limit unchecked procedural drift in watchlist management and supports consistent practices.
Providing detailed guidance, summaries, and counts to Congress risks revealing sensitive operational methods or investigative focus, which could hinder counterterrorism and crime‑fighting effectiveness.
Expanded disclosures about who is added or removed and related reporting increase privacy risks for individuals and the chance of unauthorized leaks or misuse of watchlist information.
Preparing, compiling, vetting, and delivering detailed annual reports and responding to document requests will impose administrative burdens and costs on the FBI and other agencies, diverting staff time and resources from operations.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires FBI to notify Congress of material watchlist policy changes within 30 days and to produce two years of annual reports with counts/breakdowns of U.S. persons on the terrorist watchlist.
Representative · D-TX
Official title: To require notifications of changes to policies and procedures governing terrorist watchlist and transnational organized crime watchlist, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Joaquin Castro · Last progress December 10, 2025
Requires the FBI to notify certain congressional committees within 30 days whenever it makes a material change to the Terrorist Screening Dataset or the Transnational Organized Crime Actor Detection Program watchlists, and to provide guidance on watchlist use on request. Also requires the FBI to deliver annual reports for two years (first due Jan 31, 2026) giving counts and breakdowns of persons on the terrorist watchlist who are known or presumed U.S. persons, plus related nomination and affiliation data.