NEW YORK – No more people stopped, checked, searched or investigated just for the color of their skin. The Obama administration is ready to launch the most important anti-racist turnaround in recent decades in the field of security. A turning point that joins the already announced police squeeze.
Justice Minister Eric Holder is preparing to present, at the beginning of next week, the new rules that ban the so-called “racial profiling” for the first time on a national level, the controversial practice according to which racial factors become fundamental in determining law enforcement intervention. A practice that has always been illegal for civil rights defense associations. And repeatedly criticized by President Obama himself.

The concept of “racial profiling” – the Washington Post reveals – will also be extended so as to avoid that FBI agents, in opening an investigation, may also consider factors such as religion and nationality of origin to be decisive.

However, there will be exceptions, mainly linked to the fight against terrorism and the emergence of illegal immigration. As the Washington Post always reveals, the new rules will not apply to many agents and officials dependent on the Department of Homeland Security, those who are in charge of controls at airports or on the southern borders of the United States. This decision – the Post writes – which was reached after a hard battle within the federal administration, with some top executives opposed to exempting the men of the Transportation Security Administration (Tsa) and those of the Us Customs and Border Protection.