DHS currently protects 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose networks and systems are deemed crucial to U.S. national security, economic security, and public health and safety, such as the critical manufacturing, communications, and energy sectors.70 These needs will only increase as digital connectivity plays a growing role in daily American life, particularly as the pandemic has forced many to work from home and increased everyones dependence on internet access. Seizing the opportunity to reimagine what it means to keep America secure and recalibrate DHSs priorities accordingly would enable the department to refocus its efforts in areas where it can add unique value and ensure that the government fulfills its responsibility to guarantee the safety, security, and prosperity of all Americans and those who come to live, study, work, travel, and seek safety here. As then-nominee Alejandro Mayorkas argued in his confirmation hearing, DHS is and should be fundamentally, a department of partnerships.5 He is right. As DHS as a whole intensifies focus on safety and service, law enforcement efforts should occur within this context rather than as the primary mission. It recommends that DHS adopt a new safety and services model, outlined above, that increases its emphasis on connecting, communicating, facilitating, welcoming, and helping, while simultaneously recalibrating its focus on external threats by bringing its emphasis on protecting, securing, preventing, and enforcing into better balance with its other priorities. A well-managed border will be safe and secure while also efficiently offering different services needed to travel, trade, or seek asylum in the United States. While the Coast Guard plays an important role in maritime security and maritime law enforcement efforts, it is also responsible forand takes great pride insearch and rescue and disaster relief efforts. Even the Secret Service, which focuses largely on protecting elected leaders, plays an important role in ensuring public safety at National Special Security Events, playing a safety and services role that is critical to working with local communities across the nation on events of critical or high-visibility importance.78, In contrast, components such as the FPS and ICE are examples of DHS components that are primarily focused on enforcing federal laws and should not remain in a reimagined DHS. It would also provide a framework through which officials could then turn to reforming the structure of DHS, to determine which elements of the agency need to stay within DHS and which may better fit within other parts of the bureaucracy. Meanwhile, DHS is missing opportunities to meet needs that other departments and agencies cannot and opportunities to lead where DHSs unique strengths would be maximally effective in solving problems. hVN0/K The organization of DHS is in accordance with the Homeland Security Act, as modified by previous notices to Congress under Section 872 of the Homeland Security Act and by future legislative enactments. Critical Infrastructure Sectors. Likewise, the merging of the OFO and the Border Patrol would help to ensure effective border management that does more to help border communities, businesses, families, visitors, and those seeking refuge here, even as it continues to ensure a secure border. A change in policies alone will not achieve the goal of building a fair, humane, and workable immigration system. The departments founding mission to prevent another 9/11-style attack continues to influence its outsize focus on counterterrorismdespite the fact that DHSs ability to prevent terrorism is limited, and entities such as the FBI and NCTC are often in the lead statutorily. Elisa Massimino is a senior fellow with the National Security and International Policy team at at the Center. DHS provides high-quality, affordable health care coverage and public health services to Wisconsin residents. A better-managed system would also plan for shifting flows of migrants and asylum-seekers at the border, anticipate the infrastructure needed to safely and humanely process and screen them, and cultivate a welcoming culture of front-line service agents. DHS' most recent and updated organizational chart as of June 2022. These steps include clarifying the CRCLs statutory authority to ensure that it is involved in the policymaking process from the beginning, rather than being asked to respond or investigate once policy is already set; that its recommendations receive timely responses from the agency; and more.86 In addition, this study recommends a broader policy role for DHS in protecting personal information and privacy. He began his career as a district adjudications officer before transitioning to deportation officer with the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and he was a member of one of ICE's first fugitive operations teams and an instructor at the ICE Academy. Philip E. Wolgin is the acting vice president of Immigration Policy at the Center. Renewing the DHS workforce also is critical to the departments long-term success. Here's how you know dataLayer.push({"event": "signup_submit", "form_detail":"enSubscribeSlideUp"}); Alexandra Schmitt is a senior policy analyst on the National Security and International Policy team at the Center. At a minimum, this would mean elevating the CRCL officereven while remaining operationally independent to oversee complaints related to civil rights and civil libertiesto an assistant secretary level, with a seat at the management table, to be able to more directly influence agencywide decision-making. 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. Collections Internal Directives Strategy and Doctrinal Products Keywords Policy Topics Homeland Security Enterprise Last Updated: 01/10/2023 Was this page helpful? Without strengthened protections and an ethos committed to protecting all Americans equally, such sharing may do more harm than good. 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. DHS should take a broader view of what it means to keep the nation secure and adapt its mission and activities accordingly. Acronym Glossary Necessary safeguards would need to be put in place to ensure that what immigration detention remains does not become wrapped up in the overall criminal carceral system. While the department must continue its efforts to enforce U.S. laws where applicable, those activities conducted at DHS should be primarily in service to the overall safety and services mission of the agency. var onSuccessSubmitenSubscribeFooter = function() { In too many instances, DHS has pursued policies absent an articulated legal foundation, with disastrous results, including: DHS personnel acting as domestic law enforcement in response to peaceful protests in Portland, Oregon; ICE arresting a survivor of domestic abuse seeking a protective order in a courthouse; and the U.S. Border Patrol stopping a 10-year-old girl in an ambulance on her way to emergency surgery.33 Others, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have documented serious abuses and overreach by DHS officials, particularly at U.S. borders and in immigration enforcement operations.34 It is difficult to overstate the harm that the Border Patrol and ICE have caused to relationships with communities and local officials across the country.35, About 90 committees and subcommittees have jurisdiction over DHSs planning, policies, and budgetseach focused on a small piece of the department rather than the entire homeland security operational matrix. 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. Abolishing DHS and returning its components to where they came from is neither politically feasible nor wise, and giving DHS more resources and responsibility without substantive changes will do little to fix the departments underlying problems. ICE is charged with enforcing immigration laws and investigating the illegal movement of people and goods. Fiscal Services - Mark Bartolozzi, Director. Xs~_7^{$}UAe5u)haU8vP6179kqZ>95[6No4%OcE6:&v+ yz An organizational structure is a system that outlines how certain activities are directed in order to achieve the goals of an organization. Chief Financial Officer - Robert Brock. 8791, the Department of Homeland Security Reform Act of 2020 As Introduced by Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), available at, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, available at, Steve Vladeck and Benjamin Wittes, DHS Authorizes Domestic Surveillance to Protect Statues and Monuments, Lawfare, July 20, 2020, available at, Federal Register, Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records, September 18, 2017, available at, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Privacy Act of 1974; DHS/CBP-024 Intelligence Records System (CIRS) System of Records,, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, available at, U.S. National Archives, Executive Order 12333 United States intelligence activities, December 4, 1981, available at, Mitch Lortz, What is the All-Hazards Approach to Emergency Preparedness?, Everbridge, January 9, 2018, available at, For example, a 2010 fact sheet released a year after the bombing highlighted department reforms aimed at enhancing counterterrorism efforts and claimed, Protecting the United States from terrorism is the cornerstone of homeland security. Press Office, Department of Homeland Security 2010 Accomplishments & Reforms (Washington: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2010), available at, Nick Miroff, Trump shifting DHS focus from counterterrorism to immigration,, Kaveh Waddell, America Already Had a Muslim Registry,, Sari Horwitz and Jerry Markon, Racial profiling will still be allowed at airports, along border despite new policy,, American Civil Liberties Union, National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, available at, Carrie Cordero, Reforming the Department of Homeland Security Through Enhanced Oversight & Accountability (Washington: Center for a New American Security, 2020), available at, Richard Gonzales, ICE Detains Alleged Victim Of Domestic Abuse At Texas Courthouse, NPR, February 16, 2017, available at, American Civil Liberties Union, ICE and Border Patrol Abuses, available at, Ryan Brooks, ICE Deported A Survivor Of The El Paso Walmart Shooting Who Was Assisting In The Investigation, Her Lawyers Says, Buzzfeed News, January 30 2021, available at, Donald J. Mihalek, Congressional committee power erodes homeland security,, The Atlantic Council, The Future of DHS project: Time to reform Congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, December 17, 2020, available at, Atlantic Council, Former and Acting Secretaries of Homeland Security sign open letter on consolidating congressional jurisdiction over DHS, Press release, November 9, 2020, available at, Carrie Cordero and Katrina Mulligan, Modernizing the Department of Homeland Security, Lawfare, December 9, 2020, available at, Office of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Pelosi Announces Agreement on Committee Jurisdiction Regarding Department of Homeland Security, Press release, January 25, 2021, available at, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Soon thereafter, Congress also put the wheels in motion to stand up a new center for countering terrorism. The Coast Guard provides perhaps the best example, balancing its search and rescue missions with its clear and tailored drug and migrant interdiction roles. Finally, it would ensure that DHS is most effectively positioned to solve national challenges. Learn about our sister organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans. 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. DHS has an uneven role in communicating threat information to the public. It will also put the department and its workforce in a better position to focus on the needs that only DHS can meet given its flexible authorities and unique capacity to respond to a range of issues that fall between the gaps of responsibilities of other federal departments and agencies. Department leadership should work to clearly set limits on enforcement activities and constrain them appropriately to ensure past mistakes and abuses are not repeated and work with Congress to codify these restrictions. A clear structure allows every team member to be involved. DHSs complicated web of roles and responsibilities also means that it plays a supporting role nearly everywhere but rarely leads. Previously, Ries was senior adviser to HHSC's chief . Moving forward, DHS has an opportunity to focus on the most pressing threats, including domestic and borderless threats in addition to ongoing global threats, and to hone the departments capacity to serve as the emergency response quarterback for a broader set of national emergencies. FEMA is comprised of: Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where the Office of the Administrator and various program offices are located. , an advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans. 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. Successive reform efforts and the use of DHS to advance partisan political objectives have led to sharp swings in the departments headquarters-level focus. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The FPS protects federal facilities, their occupants, and visitors by providing law enforcement and protective security services. Operational and Support Components The TSAs Federal Air Marshal Service provides additional passenger safety on commercial passenger flights. 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