Hillsborough County Republican Rep. Danny Alvarez outside a Florida House committee room in Tallahassee on Feb. 24, 2026. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
A bill (HB 945) that would create a statewide counterterrorism and counterintelligence unit within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement received pushback from Democrats and one Republican in a committee hearing Tuesday.
One lawmaker said it evoked echoes of COINTELPRO, the FBI special counter-intelligence program created to neutralize political dissent in the 1950s and ’60s.
The primary goal of the unit would be to “detect, identify, neutralize, and exploit adversary intelligence entities, international and domestic terrorists, insider threats, corporate threats, and other foreign adversaries to protect this state and the United States of America.”
Bill sponsor Danny Alvarez, a Republican from Hillsborough County, noted that then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly created a dedicated counterterrorism unit within the New York City Police Department staffed with 1,000 officers after federal intelligence services failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
“History shows us that when we depend on the federal government, Florida loses,” he said.
However, that approach in New York meant increased surveillance that drew criticism for violating civil liberties.
Objections are raised
Legislators and First Amendment advocates expressed concerns about something similar happening in Florida.
“After the surveillance abuses in the ’60s with federal agents monitoring Americans based on their associations and viewpoints, public outrage forced guardrails into the law,” said Bobby Bloch, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation of Florida. “In our lifetime, we have seen how tradecraft has gone off the rails when it doesn’t have these guardrails.”
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, said he shared concerns about he called “vagueness” in the bill’s language.
“I’ve seen sufficient abuses of power among at least one unelected Cabinet member to give me grave concerns about the abuse of a bill like this to go into statute,” he said — a reference to Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whom Andrade says has abused his power in office.
The bill says the FDLE must create a 10-person team by July 1, 2027, to serve as the initial leadership and organizational core of the unit. Eventually, the unit would oversee seven teams in the agency’s regional operational centers.
It is expected to cost $2 billion to start, with reccurring costs of up to $1.5 million annually, Alvarez said. The bill would require the FDLE to request the number of needed positions and funding each fiscal year until fully staffed by Dec. 30, 2033.
The FDLE head is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Cabinet, consisting of the attorney general, agriculture commissioner, and chief financial officer.
Who gets surveilled?
“The initial criminal predicate has to begin and has to be there,” Alvarez said, regarding people who might fall subject to an investigation. “Are you working against our infrastructure? Are you trying to bring in a fungus into our water supply? These are the specific things like that they’re working on. Drug cartels. Terrorist organizations.”
The bill flew through its first two committees in the House with little dissent. Alvarez said it’s only been in the past week that he’s become aware of First Amendment concerns, and he promised the Budget Committee he would introduce an amendment in its final committee stop in the House to address those concerns.
But that admission didn’t mollify Democratic lawmakers, all of whom voted no on the bill.
“There is concerns, because I think about things like COINTELPRO, which was supposed to target seditious terrorist activity and yet assassinated civil rights leaders,” said Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg. (A U.S. Senate report published in 1976 said that the FBI’s efforts as part of COINTELPRO “contributed to a climate of violence in which four Black Panthers were shot to death.”)
“I think about … what happened after 9/11 and how innocent Americans were targeted. The concern is that there are no guardrails that I see in this bill to ensure what judicial oversight looks like.”
Speaking to reporters after his bill cleared the committee, Alvarez said he’s willing to strip language describing the term “adversary intelligence entity” to no longer include any “person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”
The proposal has one more stop — its fourth — in the State Affairs Committee before reaching the House floor. Its companion measure, sponsored by Fort Myers Republican Jonathan Martin in the Senate, has two more stops before reaching the floor of that chamber.