The bill adds a new Section 890E to the Homeland Security Act, directing the Secretary of Homeland Security to implement a Department-wide use-of-force policy for DHS law enforcement officers and agents. The policy must limit force to what is objectively reasonable, prioritize de-escalation where feasible, require identification and verbal warnings when possible, and bar chokeholds and carotid restraints to control non-compliant persons resisting arrest.
Beyond the standard, the bill obligates components to provide initial and recurrent training, appoint subject-matter experts to oversee compliance, and maintain use-of-force review councils to analyze incidents and recommend changes. It also sets out data-collection duties for the Secretary, semiannual public reports disaggregated by component, immediate notification requirements for hospitalizations or deaths, and ongoing Inspector General review—measures that increase transparency but shift implementation work and costs to DHS components.
At a Glance
What It Does
Directs the DHS Secretary to adopt a department-wide use-of-force policy that emphasizes objective reasonableness and de-escalation, bans chokeholds/carotid restraints against non-compliant resisting persons, mandates training, and establishes internal review structures. It also creates a data-collection regime with semiannual public reporting and requires 24-hour briefings when force causes hospitalization or death.
Who It Affects
Applies to law enforcement officers and agents across DHS components (for example, CBP, ICE, TSA, U.S. Secret Service), component heads and training units who must implement and document compliance, congressional homeland-security committees that receive rapid briefings, and the public and advocates who gain access to semiannual reports.
Why It Matters
Brings consistency to how DHS components authorize and review force and creates a public, semiannual dataset on serious use-of-force incidents—changing internal compliance workloads, shaping training priorities, and increasing external oversight of federal homeland-security policing.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill inserts a new statutory section into the Homeland Security Act requiring the Secretary to create a single, Department-wide use-of-force policy applicable to all DHS law enforcement officers and agents. That policy must ground force decisions in an "objectively reasonable" standard tied to the totality of circumstances, prefer de-escalation tactics, and, when feasible, require officers to identify themselves and give a verbal warning before applying force.
It also contains a specific prohibition on using chokeholds and carotid restraints to control non-compliant persons who are resisting arrest.
Implementation duties fall to component leaders: the statute requires initial and recurrent training covering the full range of force tactics and de-escalation; each component head must name a subject-matter expert responsible for compliance; and each must maintain a use-of-force review council staffed with people who can analyze incidents and produce recommendations for training and policy changes. Those councils are explicitly charged with identifying trends and developing lessons to circulate across DHS.On transparency, the Secretary must issue data-collection requirements and publish a public report every six months.
The reports must capture incidents that produce injury or death to officers or others, deadly force events (including firearm discharges), intentional deployment of less-lethal devices or canines against a person, vehicle or kinetic-impact tactics, and disabling fire against vessels or aircraft. Reports must be component-disaggregated and include region or jurisdiction and circumstances; they must also say whether anyone was injured or killed and summarize any finalized internal analyses and findings about compliance with federal law and DHS policy.The bill adds an immediacy layer: within 24 hours of any DHS use-of-force incident that results in hospitalization or death (to an officer or a person), the Secretary must brief the House and Senate homeland-security committees and inform the public of the facts as ascertained.
The statute requires published information to protect individual privacy and directs the Department’s Inspector General to review compliance with the new policy and requirements on an ongoing basis. The bill does not appropriate funds, create new private legal remedies, or specify enforcement penalties; those implementation details would be handled administratively by DHS components.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Secretary must publish semiannual, component-disaggregated reports covering incidents that cause injury or death, deadly-force events (including firearms), intentional less-lethal or canine deployments, kinetic-impact tactics, and disabling fire against vessels or aircraft.
Within 24 hours of any use-of-force incident that results in hospitalization or death of an officer or person, the Secretary must brief the House and Senate homeland-security committees and inform the public of the facts as ascertained.
The statute explicitly prohibits chokeholds and carotid restraints used to control non-compliant persons who are resisting arrest.
Each DHS component head must designate a subject-matter expert for use-of-force compliance and maintain a use-of-force review council to analyze incidents, surface trends, and recommend training and policy improvements.
The Department’s Inspector General is directed to conduct ongoing reviews of compliance with the statutory policy and the components’ training and oversight structures.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Department-wide use-of-force standard and tactical rules
This subsection requires the Secretary to implement a single DHS policy that binds all law enforcement officers and agents in the Department. Key operative elements are the objective-reasonableness benchmark; a preference for de-escalation tactics; a requirement to identify oneself and issue a warning when feasible; and a categorical ban on chokeholds and carotid restraints to control non-compliant persons who are resisting. Practically, this creates a uniform legal baseline for tactical decisions across diverse DHS missions, from border enforcement to protective details.
Training and component-level compliance structures
This subsection obligates components to provide initial and recurrent training covering the full range of force tactics, including de-escalation. It also requires each component head to appoint a subject-matter expert responsible for compliance and to maintain a use-of-force review council. Those councils must analyze incidents, recommend policy and training changes, and identify lessons to be shared across the Department—formalizing an internal feedback loop linking operational practice to training and policy updates.
Data collection, public reporting, and immediate notification
The Secretary must issue requirements so components collect consistent incident data and must publish a six-month public report listing incidents that meet enumerated thresholds (injury/death, deadly force, less-lethal or canine deployments, kinetic-impact tactics, disabling fire). Reports must be disaggregated by component and include region/jurisdiction and circumstances, and they must note whether anyone was injured or killed. The subsection also mandates a rapid, 24-hour briefing/public notice for incidents causing hospitalization or death. Those provisions create recurring transparency expectations but also impose significant data-management and redaction tasks on components.
Inspector General oversight
The Inspector General is directed to review compliance with the statutory policy and the training and oversight requirements on an ongoing basis. That provision empowers independent internal audit and investigation capacity to assess whether components are following the new rules, but the statute does not prescribe specific reporting timelines or remedial steps the OIG must take beyond review, leaving follow-up and enforcement mechanisms to existing OIG authorities and DHS management.
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Explore Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- People encountered by DHS law enforcement (including migrants, travelers, and persons at ports of entry): will gain a consistent, department-wide standard emphasizing de-escalation and a chokehold/carotid restraint prohibition in specified situations, and they will see more public data on serious incidents.
- Civil rights groups, researchers, and journalists: receive semiannual, component-disaggregated datasets and summaries of final internal analyses, improving the ability to monitor trends and identify systemic issues.
- Component compliance and training units: obtain a statutory mandate to harmonize training and review practices, which can reduce legal uncertainty and provide a formal mechanism to update tactics across missions.
- Congressional homeland-security committees: gain a guaranteed rapid-notification channel for serious incidents and regular reporting to inform oversight.
- The Department as a whole: benefits from structured internal review councils that can standardize lessons learned across components and potentially reduce inconsistent practices.
Who Bears the Cost
- DHS components (e.g., CBP, ICE, TSA, U.S. Secret Service): will need to fund and run expanded training programs, maintain review councils, and build or adapt data-collection systems to meet reporting requirements.
- Component leadership and designated subject-matter experts: will absorb new administrative burdens to document compliance, run reviews, and coordinate cross-component information sharing.
- DHS Office of Inspector General: faces increased ongoing review responsibilities that may require shifting audit priorities or additional resources.
- Operational units and frontline officers: may experience constrained tactical options (and the operational training needed to adjust tactics), as well as increased scrutiny of incidents that could affect morale and litigation exposure.
- Contract vendors and training providers: could see demand for updated curricula, scenario-based training, and data-management solutions, creating new procurement and oversight work for components.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill balances two legitimate aims—protecting public safety and officer safety through operational discretion, and increasing accountability and transparency through uniform standards and reporting—but those goals collide: stricter, standardized rules and rapid public disclosure improve oversight and public trust while reducing tactical flexibility and imposing substantial administrative costs on components charged with high-risk, time-sensitive missions.
The bill sets clear directional policy but leaves several implementation levers unspecified. It adopts an "objectively reasonable" standard—a familiar, constitutionally rooted test—but does not define key terms (for example, what "when feasible" means for issuing warnings, or how to classify complex encounters).
The chokehold/carotid restraint ban applies narrowly to controlling "non-compliant persons resisting arrest," which could carve out situations where restraints are used against compliant persons, individuals posing imminent danger, or in tactical entries; those distinctions will require interpretive guidance from DHS to avoid inconsistent application across components.
Data and transparency provisions create real administrative work. The statute requires consistent, component-disaggregated six-month reports and immediate 24-hour briefings for hospitalizations or deaths, but it does not fund data systems or prescribe standardized definitions and data formats.
That raises risks of uneven reporting quality, undercounting, or delayed publication; privacy protections and national-security redactions may also limit the informational value of reports. Finally, the statute directs OIG review but specifies no remedial pathway for systemic noncompliance—no new disciplinary or civil remedies are created—meaning enforcement will depend on internal DHS action, OIG reports, and congressional oversight rather than statutory penalties.
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