(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Department of Homeland Security has an initiative that has been aptly described by some researchers as a “pre-crime” program—dispersing millions of dollars in grants to local organizations that attempt to identify potential terrorists based on their “problematic” beliefs.
The Trump administration is seemingly trying to end this initiative, known as The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3.
Eight members of the center’s staff were fired in early March as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to trim the government by getting rid of probationary staffers. According to a DHS employee and a center employee who was fired, the staffers were rehired late Monday but were then put on administrative leave, following two March 13 court decisions ordering the Republican administration to rehire fired probationary staffers. CP3 Director William Braniff also said he would “resign alongside of them.”
The administration vowed to fight the judges’ decisions to rehire the probationary staffers.
While the White House has received much criticism over its sweeping cuts to various federal agencies, liberals might support this cut. Liberal and pro-Muslim groups have called for the elimination of CP3 for years on the grounds that it targets Muslim and minority groups. Critics also note that CP3’s claims to thwart terrorism and mass shootings are dubious, at best.
According to those groups, the DHS’s initiative amounts to a pre-crime program.
“CP3’s attempts to predict future crimes are to be based on behavioral patterns— i.e., profiling—and on encouraging members of the public to inform on their families, friends, and classmates,” Ed Hasbrouck, a consultant to the nonprofit Identity Project, wrote when CP3 was first announced under the Biden administration.
For years, liberal and pro-Muslim groups have been calling for de-funding the DHS's dystopian 'pre-crime' program— which entails the DHS spreading money to local organizations that attempt to identify potential terrorists based on their “problematic” beliefs.
Well, the Trump… pic.twitter.com/7Y9tiPFkwa— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) March 19, 2025
“The problem, of course, is that the law does not permit prosecution based solely on patterns of lawful behavior. With good reason: ‘precrime’ prediction is a figment of the imagination of the creators of a dystopian fantasy movie, Minority Report.”
In April 2023, 40 pro-privacy groups—which included the ACLU, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Muslims for Liberty—said CP3 is “wasteful, providing no security benefits and actively undermining civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy.”
The groups explained that the DHS’s initiative is relying on the discredited “radicalization” theory—the false idea that there are reliable predictive risk indicators demonstrating that someone is on a path to violence.
“Government-identified behavioral indicators have included communicating that one is in distress, deviating from one’s routine, isolation, economic stress, paying off debts, or being preoccupied with a person, place, belief, or cause. They are often commonplace, innocuous, or otherwise easily explained,” the groups said.
The privacy groups also raised concerns about the DHS’s venture into a nebulous “public health” behavioral threat assessment model.
“This new model has grantees train mental health professionals to carry out law enforcement functions such as identifying and reporting perceived threats, and turning clinics and medical assessments into sites of surveillance,” the groups said.
“Roping health and welfare groups into performing policing functions also compromises the willingness of patients, especially those coming from vulnerable populations, to seek crucial health care for fear of being surveilled by or reported to law enforcement.”
Additionally, the groups flagged the DHS’s new category of crime called “targeted violence.” The department has apparently created this category because the term “terrorism” doesn’t cover events such as mass shootings.
“The scope of targeted violence would cover crimes as disparate as school shootings, mass shootings, sabotaging oil pipelines and hate crimes in the same category, applying to these different behaviors the same debunked framework,” the groups warned.
“CP3 stigmatizes and delegitimizes innocent people based on what they think or who they know. Expansive criteria for who might be considered dangerous invites easily abused discretion into violence prevention,” the groups concluded. “The program is antithetical to the rights of all Americans to worship, associate, and believe freely as secured by the First Amendment.”
Last year, the center announced $18 million in grant funding to 35 recipients.
Those grants included $700,000 to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida as it worked to “increase community awareness of the signs that someone may be on a pathway to violence.” Another $344,982 went to the Southwest Texas Fusion Center to help it expand its behavioral threat assessment and management team to cover more counties in southwest Texas, where it works to help schools reduce violence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
