or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Attachment(s): An official website of the United States government. An expanded role for DHS in managing information sharing and public disclosures of intelligence between federal entities and their local counterparts would be a valuable public service and enhance DHSs role as a communicator. CBP and the TSA are primarily focused on enabling the safe and secure movement of goods and people and have narrow law enforcement roles that enable these primary missions. Without such a mechanism, America lacks critical information on threats that could be mitigated, and the government is unable to enlist the capacity of American businesses and the American people in its threat response. Border Patrol agents, for example, would be focused on addressing border issues rather than being deployed in places such as Portland as Federal Protective Service (FPS) personnel. Second, DHS should recalibrate its activities at the border to emphasize efficient and secure management of the flow of goods and people while welcoming asylum-seekers with a safe, legal, and orderly process for them to seek refuge in America; to rehabilitate its relationships in border communities; and to work to create a vibrant border region.67. Learn about our sister organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans. The current administration should evaluate how much of this realignment can be done within existing statutory functions and what requires congressional assistance and legislation. Despite being hamstrung by political leaders, some DHS officials nonetheless publicly reassured the nation that there was no evidence any foreign adversary was capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies.63 Such steps were critical to maintaining credibility in the elections. The departments threat-oriented roles will, of course, remain, but this new framework will help DHS realign its focus and priorities on those areas where it can be maximally effective and provide value to the American people and those who live, study, work, travel, and seek safety here. HSI, within ICE, investigates transnational crime and threats and claims a role in nearly all criminal activity, even those only tangentially related to DHSs mission. ` "
They lent us their time and expertise over the past six months to help shape our understanding of what the mission and value proposition of DHS should be in todays world in order to address the needs, challenges, and opportunities facing the nation and to develop and refine our recommendations. } The original legislation that created DHS tasked the new agency with seven primary missions, almost all of which relate to counterterrorism: The original administration proposal in June 2002 to create DHS proposed a clear and efficient organizational structure with four divisions: border and transportation security; emergency and preparedness response; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear countermeasures; and information analysis and infrastructure protection.16 By the time it came into existence, however, the original agencies and different components of the federal government brought together under the DHS umbrella represented a much broader range of activities.17. Understanding the opportunities DHS has today is critical to transforming the agency to better meet unfulfilled needs around Americans safety and security, to address the issues that emerged or significantly worsened during the past four years, and to focus attention on the right set of priorities for the department going forward. This means, for example, dialing up DHSs focus on disaster relief and cybersecurity and dialing down its law enforcement focus, particularly where other government agencies have or should have primary responsibility. %%EOF
DHS intelligence activities, at one time derided as being uncoordinated and duplicative of work being done elsewhere, have more recently raised concerns that DHS was acting beyond its already broad authorities. This fractured structure makes it nearly impossible for DHS headquarters leaders to manage the department effectively or efficiently.36 CAP has joined the Atlantic Council and the CNAS in calling for consolidated oversight of DHS.37 In addition, six former secretaries and acting secretaries of homeland security recently signed a letter to congressional leadership calling for the House and Senate to consolidate congressional oversight of DHS in a single authorizing committeeas is done for other departments such as the Department of Defense.38 A more streamlined structure under one authorizing and one appropriating committeesuch as that governing the Pentagon post-Goldwater-Nichols reform, where oversight was centralized under the Armed Services committeeswould allow lawmakers to more effectively oversee the broad range of the departments activities and ensure they are properly balanced against the agencys overall priorities.39 The recent memorandum of understanding announced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a welcome step toward improving oversight coordination among the various committees that have jurisdiction over DHS, but more work is needed to centralize authority under the Committee on Homeland Security in the House and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in the Senate.40. 0
Hiring surges in the DHS workforceincluding recently during the Trump administrations expansion of the law enforcement officer rankshave led to significant workforce growth at DHS in a short period of time.59 In some cases, this growth was accompanied by poor quality control in hiring: Investigations following hiring surges in ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have shown that following these large influxes of new hires, cases of corruption and misconduct spiked.60 Going forward, DHS has the opportunity to better align its human capital to meet current needs. endstream
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There is also a need for a more empowered and proactive agency that shares cyberthreat intelligence between businesses and government agencies, with the aim of helping organizations quickly identify and mitigate potential cyberincursions. Incident response is a role that DHS is well situated to lead, and by doing so, and doing so well, other federal agencies can leverage DHSs incident response capacity and avoid replication. As DHS approaches its 20-year mark, the United States has an opportunity to redefine the departments value proposition for the future and to better align DHSs structure and activities with its mission. Since its founding, there has been persistent confusion about DHSs role as well as complaints about its structure, operations, and oversight. Mara Rudman, Rudy deLeon, Joel Martinez, 5 More } Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is the principal investigative component of DHS and is responsible for investigating, disrupting, and dismantling transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and terrorist networks that threaten or seek to exploit the customs and immigration laws of the United States. FEMA is comprised of: Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where the Office of the Administrator and various program offices are located. Recent examples include DHSs yearslong battle with the DOJ over which agency has the lead for transnational organized crime; tensions with the FBI and the IC over foreign influence and election interference roles and responsibilities;57 turf battles over cybersecurity jurisdiction between DHSs CISA and the National Security Agency;58 and persistent questions about the focus and utility of DHSs intelligence unit. , an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans. Refocusing DHSs immigration activities on the provision of services to facilitate admission, with enforcement that supports that objective, will pay dividends for America by promoting family unity rather than family separation; ensuring American employers can more easily access a global workforce; enhancing the United States influence by streamlining access to the country for tourists and visitors from around the world; and restoring our identity as a generous nation that keeps the door open to those fleeing harm in their home countries. Todays digital environment means that our critical infrastructure is more connected and more dependent on functioning cybersecurity than ever. Public debate is split between those who call for the department, or parts of it, to be dismantled8 and those who argue that DHS needs more resources and responsibility.9Both approaches miss the point. Paul C. Light, The true size of government is nearing a record high, Brookings Institution, October 7, 2020, available at, Joshua Breisblatt, Spike in Corruption Followed Last Hiring Surge at CBP and ICE, Immigration Impact, April 25, 2017, available at, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, About CISA., To ensure the government does not inappropriately influence U.S. public opinion and discourse, Congress needs to strengthen its oversight and laws outlawing domestic government propaganda (currently articulated under the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012). It then provides an analysis of DHSs challenges, highlighting long-standing foundational problems, including where the department is absent or not contributing. Monday, June 13, 2022. The organizational chart for DHS suggests that the secretary and deputy secretary are responsible for overseeing 23 separate bureaus and agencies ranging in size from the Office of Public Affairs to the entire U.S. Coast Guard to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which has 65,000 employees.41 Yet the resources for the secretary of DHS pale in comparison to those of other federal agencies: The State Departments Office of the Secretary had some $57 million for FY 2019 and 75 employees to oversee a bureaucracy of 70,000 personnel while DHSs had just $19 million for FY 2018 and 68 employees for a bureaucracy of 240,000.42 Studies by the Atlantic Council and the CNAS recently proposed the creation of an associate secretary position to improve coordination and management at the highest levels of the department.43 While more bureaucracy is not always the answer, the current secretarys office does not have the personnel, resources, or authority to effectively lead a department of DHSs size today. Rebalancing toward a safety and services model requiresbringingDHSs activitiesintobalance andensuring they arenot overly focused on threat-oriented priorities. As a result, DHS has not invested in building its capacity to respond to borderless threats, such as natural disasters and cyberattacks against government enterprises, and those, such as the growing threat from white supremacist violence, that originate within U.S. borders. Carrie Cordero from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has written extensively on the need for enhanced oversight and accountability to address the growth in size and scope of DHSs activities.32 As Cordero argued, there is a persistent mismatch between DHSs foundational statutory mission and its day-to-day operations. DHS still has an important role to play in preventing attacks against the United States and Americans at home and abroad. Organizational Chart See how the Department of Homeland Security and all of its component agencies are organized by exploring the Organizational Chart. Reform of the agencyand decisions about its future size and scope of responsibilitiesshould begin not with a catalog of DHSs deficiencies but rather with an analysis of Americas homeland security needs. Philip E. Wolgin is the acting vice president of Immigration Policy at the Center. This initiative would be part of efforts to develop a pipeline of leaders, encourage creativity and innovation, and drive a cultural shift within the department toward its new service-oriented framework. DHSs role should also be carefully calibrated to focus where the department is best positioned relative to other agencies, such as at the borders and ports of entry, and to enable effective information sharing with the other relevant federal players. Despite consensus among policymakers that the department could be far more effective,7 there is little agreement on how to fix it. Federal emergencies will continue to pose significant threats to Americans and their way of life. DHS should work toward expanding existing capacity and investing in new, flexible headquarters and regional capabilities that can address a wide range of emergencies and situations. 2i{,g%_,=@,(}H30h*cD@ J
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