The U.S. Department of Justice released new guidelines on profiling individuals, but immigrant, minority and religious rights groups remained concerned about exemptions for certain federal agencies.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the revised "Guidance For Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Regarding The Use Of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, National Origin, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Or Gender Identity" aimed for law enforcement, national security and intelligence activities to adhere.

Holder's new guidelines prohibit law enforcement from conducting "routine or spontaneous" decisions based on ethnicity, gender, gender identity, national origin, race, religion or sexual orientation "to any degree" unless the "listed characteristics apply to a suspect description."

Civil rights groups have commended on the DOJ's new policies, but noted concerns regarding exemptions for individuals screened at the border and airports. Holder's memorandum stated, "This Guidance does not apply to Federal non-law enforcement personnel, including U.S. military, intelligence, or diplomatic personnel, and their activities. In addition, this Guidance does not apply to interdiction activities in the vicinity of the border, or to protective, inspection, or screening activities."

Specifically, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) could continue to profile individuals based on ethnicity, gender, gender identity, national origin, race, religion or sexual orientation.

"The release of this new and more expansive guidance is welcome and comes at an important time for our nation. But unfortunately, it still falls short," National Immigration Forum Director Ali Noorani said. "We are very disappointed that this new guidance fails to prohibit CBP from racially profiling at ports of entry and immigration checkpoints, and during stops. Racial profiling makes us less secure because it perpetuates the already fractured relationship CBP has with millions of border residents."

According to Noorani, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and CBP's efforts toward transparency and accountability encountered a setback with the exemptions for border patrol enforcement.

"In cities like El Paso, whose population is 85 percent Hispanic, allowing Border Patrol agents to take into account race and ethnicity amounts to a license to operate with impunity," Noorani said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also expressed concern about the new DOJ guidelines, stating, "CAIR is dismayed that at a time when our nation is struggling to come to terms with a series of high-profile police killings of unarmed African-Americans, the DOJ would release revised profiling guidelines that include loopholes for targeting U.S. Muslims and Hispanics.

"Under these guidelines, the DOJ will still authorize the FBI's racial mapping program to continue registering minority neighborhoods from across the nation for possible surveillance and insertion of informants -- spanning African-Americans in Atlanta, Ga., to Asian-Americans in the San Francisco Bay area, to Arab and Muslim Americans in Dearborn, Mich."

CAIR commended the "sign of progress" with the Justice Department to include categories such as national origin and religion as characteristics for law enforcement to avoid specific profiling. CAIR, however, expected more progress from the department and White House as individuals are still subjected to profiling at the airport, border, communities and houses of worship.

The South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) was "deeply dismayed" with the DOJ's new guidance.

"Justice and civil rights protections cannot be dispensed on a sliding scale. Immigrants and communities of color risk continuing to be treated as second-class citizens by the very law enforcement officials tasked to protect them," SAALT Executive Director Suman Raghunathan said, adding that Monday's announcement attempts to ease law enforcements' profiling but the result is "deeply disappointing" for many communities nationwide.

"The Department of Justice is sending a clear and disturbing message that profiling continues to be acceptable by some law enforcement agents and against many communities. The collective impact of this guidance on immigrants, border communities and other communities of color makes us all less safe and does little to respond to the implications of discriminatory profiling, which has been proven time and again to be ineffective, inefficient, and unjust," Raghunathan said.

Latin Post contacted the CBP for a statement, but they did not respond.

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