Milei’s Intelligence Decree Blurs Lines Between Spies and Police

Key Points

• A New Year decree lets Argentina’s intelligence agents “apprehend” people, including without a judge’s order.
• The government says it is modernizing security for today’s threats, while critics warn of a secret-police drift.
• The real battle now shifts to Congress and the courts, where the decree’s limits will be stress-tested.

Argentina’s intelligence services began 2026 with a new job description: they can now physically seize people.

President Javier Milei signed Decree 941/2025 on December 31, 2025, and it entered into force when published on January 2, 2026.

The measure rewrites key parts of the country’s National Intelligence Law, reaffirms SIDE as the highest body of the National Intelligence System, reporting to the Chief of Cabinet and coordinated by the General Secretariat of the Presidency, and creates new counterintelligence and cyberintelligence structures meant to match “21st-century” threats.

The flashpoint is a new clause stating that intelligence personnel may “aprehend” individuals in three situations: during intelligence activities, when assisting a judicial request, or when a crime is caught in the act.

Milei’s Intelligence Decree Blurs Lines Between Spies and Police

The text also says agents must immediately notify the relevant security or police forces. Until now, Argentina’s legal architecture tried to draw a bright line: intelligence bodies were not supposed to hold coercive powers or perform police functions.

The Rio Times has tracked similar boundary-blurring across Latin America, where expanding intelligence powers has repeatedly preceded abuse. Our reporting documented how Brazil’s ABIN allegedly misused surveillance tools for political espionage during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, and how Ecuador’s 2025 intelligence law granted sweeping surveillance powers without meaningful oversight. Critics warn that Milei’s decree fits this regional pattern—granting covert operatives arrest authority while simultaneously expanding secrecy provisions—creating conditions that, as our archive shows, have historically enabled political targeting rather than genuine security gains.

Supporters argue the change mainly formalizes something every state needs in emergencies. Argentina’s criminal procedure already allows warrantless arrests in flagrante cases, and even recognizes citizen apprehension when someone is caught red-handed.

In that reading, the decree is less about building a new force than about closing operational gaps, then handing custody to police.

Opponents see something darker in the details. The decree describes intelligence work as inherently covert, expanding secrecy at the same moment it introduces a power that touches the most basic civil liberty: freedom of movement.

It also pushes counterintelligence duties across the federal public sector, making internal security practices a responsibility of top officials well beyond the spy agencies.

Internationally, most liberal democracies keep civilian intelligence services away from arrest powers, leaving detentions to police under clear judicial chains.

Some countries run hybrid internal-security services that can arrest, but typically under judicial-police frameworks. Where intelligence bodies gain broader detention authority, abuse risks rise fast.

Argentina now heads into a familiar test: whether oversight institutions can keep a sharp boundary when a decree deliberately blurs it.

Related coverage: Brazil’s Morning Call | Lula Says U.S. Crossed An “Unacceptable Line” In Venezuela O This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Latin American culture and lifestyle.

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