[331]

Civil liberties
In February 1962,[332] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was suspicious of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker,[333] presented the Kennedy administration with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned by these allegations, the FBI deployed agents to monitor King in the following months.[332] Robert Kennedy and President Kennedy also both warned King to discontinue the suspect associations. After the associations continued, Robert Kennedy issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization, in October 1963.[332]
Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so",[334] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[335] The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968.[336]

Immigration
During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy proposed an overhaul of American immigration and naturalization laws to ban discrimination based on national origin. He saw this proposal as an extension of his planned civil rights agenda as president.