It Is Time To Abolish The Department of "Homeland Security".

 

    After the worst terrorist attacks in American history, known as the "9/11 attacks", people demanded that the government "do something, anything", in response. Under then-U.S President George W. Bush (R-TX), he created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with the announcement stating:

    "The mission of the Office will be to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The Office will coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States."

    Former Governor Thomas J. Ridge (R-PA), was appointed as the first DHS Secretary. This department is the youngest (or most recently created), thus it is at the bottom of the line of succession. Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management. The fear of another terrorist attack, and the mood of the Country in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 gave President Bush huge momentum to push through a legislative agenda that he otherwise could not push through. So, what happened since this disaster department was created back on November 25, 2002?

    Well, we now have a metric to measure the likelihood of a terrorist attack (which senior members of the Bush Administraton wanted to raise the terror level before the 2004 election):

    Like most policies President Bush pushed after 9/11, it was terrible. The Department of Homeland Security has received substantial criticism over excessive bureaucracy, waste, fraud, ineffectiveness and lack of transparency. Its information sharing centers have been accused of violating American civil liberties and targeting American citizens as potential threats to national security. Congress estimates that the department has wasted roughly $15 billion in failed contracts (as of September 2008). In 2003, the department came under fire after the media revealed that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for sensitive national security databases, had obtained her bachelor, masters, and doctorate computer science degrees through Hamilton University, a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. 

    The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage". A 2015 inspection of IT infrastructure found that the department was running over a hundred computer systems whose owners were unknown, including Secret and Top Secret databases, many with out of date security or weak passwords. Basic security reviews were absent, and the department had apparently made deliberate attempts to delay publication of information about the flaws. A 2015 inspection of IT infrastructure found that the department was running over a hundred computer systems whose owners were unknown, including Secret and Top Secret databases, many with out of date security or weak passwords. Basic security reviews were absent, and the department had apparently made deliberate attempts to delay publication of information about the flaws.

    Fusion centers are terrorism prevention and response centers, many of which were created under a joint project between the Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs between 2003 and 2007. The fusion centers gather information not only from government sources, but also from their partners in the private sector. They are designed to promote information sharing at the federal level between agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice, US Military and state and local level government. As of July 2009, the Department of Homeland Security recognized at least seventy-two fusion centers. Fusion centers may also be affiliated with an Emergency Operations Center that responds in the event of a disaster.

    There are a number of documented criticisms of fusion centers, including relative ineffectiveness at counterterrorism activities, the potential to be used for secondary purposes unrelated to counterterrorism, and their links to violations of civil liberties of American citizens and others.

David Rittgers of the Cato Institute has noted:

"A long line of fusion center and DHS reports labeling broad swaths of the public as a threat to national security. The North Texas Fusion System labeled Muslim lobbyists as a potential threat; a DHS analyst in Wisconsin thought both pro- and anti-abortion activists were worrisome; a Pennsylvania homeland security contractor watched environmental activists, Tea Party groups, and a Second Amendment rally; the Maryland State Police put anti-death penalty and anti-war activists in a federal terrorism database; a fusion center in Missouri thought that all third-party voters and Ron Paul supporters were a threat."

     In 2006, MSNBC reported that Grant Goodman, "an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal." The letter was sent by a devout Catholic Filipino woman with no history of supporting Islamic terrorism. A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection "acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it's deemed necessary":

All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination," says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. "All mail means 'all mail,'" said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point.

       The department declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened or to say how often or in what volume Customs might be opening mail. Goodman's story provoked outrage in the blogosphere, as well as in the more established media. Reacting to the incident, Mother Jones remarked that "unlike other prying government agencies, Homeland Security wants you to know it is watching you." CNN observed that "on the heels of the NSA wiretapping controversy, Goodman's letter raises more concern over the balance between privacy and security."

    In July 2006, the Office of Personnel Management conducted a survey of federal employees in all 36 federal agencies on job satisfaction and how they felt their respective agency was headed. DHS was last or near to last in every category including;

• 33rd on the talent management index
• 35th on the leadership and knowledge management index
• 36th on the job satisfaction index
• 36th on the results-oriented performance culture index

    The low scores were attributed to major concerns about basic supervision, management and leadership within the agency. Examples from the survey reveal most concerns are about promotion and pay increase based on merit, dealing with poor performance, rewarding creativity and innovation, leadership generating high levels of motivation in the workforce, recognition for doing a good job, lack of satisfaction with various component policies and procedures and lack of information about what is going on with the organization. DHS is the only large federal agency to score below 50% in overall survey rankings. It was last of large federal agencies in 2014 with 44.0% and fell even lower in 2015 at 43.1%, again last place. DHS continued to rank at the bottom in 2019, prompting Congressional inquiries into the problem. High work load resulting from chronic staff shortage, particularly in Customs and Border Protection, has contributed to low morale, as have scandals and intense negative public opinion heightened by immigration policies of the Trump administration.

    With that all there, the DHS seems like a place for masochists to work, and it only gets worse. In 2018, the DHS was accused of referencing the white nationalist "Fourteen Words" slogan in an official document, by using a similar fourteen-worded title, in relation to illegal immigration and border control:

"We Must Secure The Border And Build The Wall To Make America Safe Again."

Although dismissed by the DHS as a coincidence, both the use of "88" in a document, and the similarity to the slogan's phrasing ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"), drew criticism and controversy from several media outlets. In 2020, the DHS was widely criticized for detaining protesters in Portland, Oregon. It even drew rebuke from Secretary Ridge who said that it would be "it would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities”. On August 10, 2020 in an opinion article for USA Today by Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU called for the dismantling of DHS over the deployment of federal forces in July 2020 during the Portland protests. The idea of abolishing the DHS is not new, some progressives and conservatives have wanted the department gone, although Libertarians opposed the department before it was even created.

    Now, there will be bootlickers those who believe that the department is necessary, as it is intended to keep America safe, and point out that no serious attempt at a terrorist attack by foreign enemies has taken place since 9/11, althoguh they don't understand that correlation doesn't automatically equal causation. And keep in mind, if a department of government cannot do it's job without abusing their power and abusing our rights, then the department must be abolished. The department must be completely torn up, and not replaced. Keep in mind, that the Constitution doesn't authorize the creation of the DHS (along with every other department save for State, Treasury, Justice and Defense), so the legality of the DHS should be called into question. There are plenty of departments that should be abolished for abuse of power, or not be explicitly authorized in the Constitution, so this point is not entirely beating up on just the DHS.

    My Question To Those Opposed.

    If you are opposed to the abolition of the DHS -even after all of the facts presented- then what will it take? Because curbing their powers and cutting their budget will be opposed (by you most likely) and filibustered. What would it take to bring you to the table to on this? If you support reforms, how far will they go? How much will their budgets be cut, and how aggressively will they be audited?

    If you want to keep the DHS, you are going to have a binary choice: Reforms (budget cuts, powers curbed, monthly audits), or abolition. Take you pick. Chao.

Follow me on Twitter: @SkylerSatterfi1

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Preceded by: "Remove Their Statues; Remove The Confederate Names From The Public."

Succeeded by: "It's Time To Make Puerto Rico, D.C, Among Others, Into States."