Dear Friends,Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be killed by a police officer than white Americans. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown and countless others demonstrate that driving, shopping, or even sleeping in one’s own home while Black can cost people their lives. It’s frustratingly clear that we’re still a long way off from rooting out racism, racial profiling, and brutality in America.A critical step we need to take to finally deliver on America’s promise of equality and justice for all is to pass bold, transformational police reform, and to not let bias seep deeper and deeper into a heavily broken system. That’s why I voted against a bill last night that would have required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to issue directives to rental car employees to call the police on their customers if they meet “suspicious” DHS criteria.Oregonians know first-hand the consequences of a DHS uncommitted to racial or social equality after witnessing Donald Trump’s DHS terrorize the streets of Portland. From ripping children away from their parents to forcing people to wait for their asylum hearings in dangerous Mexican border towns, I have serious concerns about giving DHS an indefinite directive to create guidelines for when people should call the police.I’ve long been concerned about the link between giving the federal government aggressive, sweeping surveillance powers and racial profiling, which is why I voted against the passage of—and continue to oppose the reauthorization of—the PATRIOT Act, which was a serious attack on Americans’ privacy and freedom. It contributed to a sharp increase in racial profiling and hate crimes against Muslims and people of Arab and South Asian descent. Those consequences are serious and completely unacceptable.We all deserve to be treated with the same decency and respect by law enforcement—and it shouldn’t matter what we look like, where we live, or where we worship.