Congress funds tribal missing-persons coordination, streamlines BIA hiring
S. 390 — BADGES for Native Communities Act · Filed by Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 4, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill creates two main programs to address missing and murdered Native Americans. First, it establishes a 5-year demonstration program allowing the Department of Interior to conduct background investigations and security clearances for Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement applicants, potentially streamlining hiring. Second, it authorizes $5 million in federal grants (2026–2030) to tribes, states, and tribal organizations to establish coordination centers, regional commissions, and alert systems to track missing persons, sexual violence, and death investigations affecting Native communities.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is establishing grant programs and coordination infrastructure for missing-persons investigations in tribal communities, paired with a demonstration program for streamlining BIA law enforcement hiring. Both are public-safety measures, not regulatory relief or private carve-outs.
What the text implies
- The background-investigation demonstration program delegates federal security-clearance authority to Interior, potentially reducing OPM oversight of BIA hiring standards for 5 years; outcomes depend on implementation and reporting fidelity.
- Grant eligibility requires states to enter memoranda of understanding with tribes for data-sharing; this may expose tribal law enforcement data to state systems with different privacy/retention standards.
The full analysis lists 3 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
tribal law enforcement agencies; state and local law enforcement (as grant co-applicants); federal law enforcement training providers