The Department of Homeland Security on Friday celebrated 20 years since former President George W. Bush pulled national security, emergency management, and immigration enforcement agencies from other departments and brought them under one roof.
Over the past two decades, the department has grown to 250,000 employees, making it the third largest in the government. Its agencies include U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service. Its mission is extensive because of its role in enforcing border, immigration, trade, and commerce laws.
Some Democrats have criticized DHS for becoming too large to manage and too powerful. Just this year, Congress appropriated $60 billion for the department.
Ahead of its 20-year birthday, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report outlining 15 major reforms DHS should make because “the department should no longer exist in its current state.”
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“Over the last two decades, we have seen our major fears about DHS come true,” Naureen Shah, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement.
“DHS has separated children from their parents at our borders, racially profiled and illegally surveilled immigrants and American citizens, and allowed private companies to rake in billions through needlessly detaining immigrants awaiting their court dates. This abuse is antithetical to our rights and our values as a nation. DHS must urgently change course,” Shah continued.
The leading civil liberties organization in the United States recommended that the Biden administration further limit ICE’s ability to arrest illegal immigrants, bar ICE from using private companies to handle detention, abandon the “deterrence” approach to immigration at the southern border, stop the expansion of facial recognition surveillance at airports and the border, and walk back the Transportation Security Administration’s focus on “identity based screening.”
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Such reforms would require support from the Biden administration and from Congress, which they have not prioritized.
