SAFE VISITS Act

Guidance for state and local foreign visits

If enacted, the Secretary of Homeland Security would create a program to assess and reduce risks from foreign visitors to state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments. Not later than 180 days after enactment and annually after that, the Secretary would send a threat analysis to the House and Senate homeland security committees and give guidance to SLTT governments. Each analysis and guidance would describe high‑risk SLTT targets, trends in visits based on vetting requests routed through fusion centers, and actions to mitigate homeland security and terrorism risks. If a specific SLTT official, office, information, facility, program, or system is identified as high‑risk, the Secretary would contact the host government, provide unclassified or appropriately classified information, help vet the visiting foreign national, and give tailored mitigation steps. Not later than 30 days after a host receives DHS vetting help, the Secretary would request a debriefing. Beginning with the second annual report, the Secretary would include a six‑month summary of outreach and vetting assistance together with each annual threat report. The bill would define “information” as non‑public SLTT data or materials and would ask DHS Science and Technology to coordinate research to improve information sharing.