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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder gestures as he speaks to members of the community during an interfaith service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church where The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Monday, Dec. 1, 2014, in Atlanta. AP / David Goldman

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce the Justice Department's release of its long-awaited revised racial profiling guidance for federal law enforcement on Monday.

In 2003, the Justice Department issued its first racial profiling guidance under former Attorney General John Ashcroft. That guidance banned profiling based on race and ethnicity, but granted exceptions for national security and border protection. Civil rights groups considered the exceptions a kind of permission to discriminate especially against Muslims in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The newly revised guidance will expand the characteristics it protects -- beyond race and ethnicity -- to include bans on profiling on the basis of gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and general identity. The guidance applies to federal law enforcement officers and also to state and local officers involved in federal law enforcement tasks. But the new guidance does continue to allow certain exceptions for the Department of Homeland Security.

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The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that there will be exceptions for its work in screening at the borders and in transportation settings. Other exceptions have been carved out for U.S. Border Patrol interdiction activities in the vicinity of the border and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) interdiction activities at ports of entry. Secret Service "protective activities" are also excluded from the new guidelines.

The Justice Department began the process of revising the guidance back in 2009. Attorney General Holder has pressed for the revised policy to be finalized before he leaves office, according to a Justice Department official. "It has been the first item on the agenda each day in his morning senior staff meetings," the official said.

"Particularly in light of certain recent incidents we've seen at the local level--and the widespread concerns about trust in the criminal justice process which so many have raised throughout the nation--it's imperative that we take every possible action to institute strong and sound policing practices," Holder said in a statement released in advance of the new guidance.

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Eric Holder to release new racial profiling guidance