DHSFormer DHS Secretary Says “Systemic DHS Problems” Existed Before, but He No Longer Recognizes Today’s ICE Operations

By Susan A. Hughes

In the 2024 presidential campaign, candidate Trump promised large-scale deportations of immigrants with violent crime records and tougher executive actions.

But following the shootings of two American protestors in Minneapolis and many citizen-documented removals of children and immigrants without any criminal record, a January Reuters/Ipsos poll found that over half of Americans disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies.  

Against this backdrop, the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics presented a frank discussion of immigration and the actions of the Department of Homeland Security.  

Juliette Kayyem, a senior lecturer in international security at HKS and former assistant secretary for governmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, spoke with Jeh Johnson, who served as the fourth U.S. secretary of Homeland Security. Johnson was also a senior fellow in the Homeland Security Project at the Kennedy School’s Beer Center for Science and International Affairs—a project that Kayyem leads as faculty director.

Johnson, who served as secretary from 2013 to 2017 in the Obama administration said, “I make a great trivia question because I served for 7.5 hours in the first Trump administration until a new cabinet member was appointed.”

Kayyem pointed out that 2025 marked a pivotal moment in how the United States thinks about immigration. “Trump was successful in closing off unlawful migration across the border,” she said, although the administration’s domestic enforcement efforts have drawn sharp criticism, protest, and outrage.

In Trump’s first 100 days, Kayyem noted the United States entered a new era of immigration enforcement with rapid deportation operations and procedural realignments. “There were 180 policy shifts in those first 100 days and over 66,000 individuals arrested,” Kayyem said. “While almost 65,00 people were deported, only 5% of the immigrants deported had criminal convictions,” Kayyem said, citing DHS website statistics.  

Kayyem also spoke about the department’s significant budget increase under Trump. “The DHS budget went from six billion dollars to 85B in a single budget shift,” she said. “That represents a 120% increase in manpower in the ICE operation alone.”

The speakers discussed how the United States and the world have witnessed the horrors of the shootings in Minneapolis, and the documented accounts of abuse in ICE detention facilities.

“When I look at the videos of the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, I see Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Custom Border Protection (CBP) agencies I don’t recognize,” said Johnson. “As I was leading DHS for 10 years, many of [these officers] worked for me.”

Johnson sees an agency without sound leadership. “Leadership sets the tone,” he said. “I see an angry, ill-trained, undisciplined force that looks like they’ve come for a fight. You become toxic in your community.”

Both Kayyem and Johnson described today’s DHS as a toxic brand. When it comes to immigration policy, that is a label you do not want, both speakers argued. It is also something that can work against successful immigration practices.

“In my experience, I’ve learned that the best immigration policy is one you hear almost nothing about, from either the left or the right,” said Johnson. “When ICE becomes toxic in a community, local officials don’t want to work with them anymore. It undermines public safety to have an occupying force that is toxic.”

When asked about future checks and balances, as a way to put the “evil genie back in the bottle,” Johnson had one suggestion: “It’s called an election.”

Referring to an op-ed he wrote in 2018, Johnson said you cannot abolish the agency responsible for enforcing U.S. immigration policies.

“If you don’t like the policies, the way we are going about our business, you change the policies. If you don’t like the policies, you change the leaders,” said Johnson. “And if you don’t like the leaders, you vote.”

But when asked if he found the “systemic moral failings” of today’s DHS extended beyond Trump’s administration, Johnson was frank. “Yes,” he said. “I won’t kid you here, to a large degree I do.” He emphasized however that abolishing the system is not the right approach. “ICE is a law enforcement agency. It’s the policies that must change.”

The full discussion is available on the IOP YouTube channel. 

Susan A. Hughes writes for the Harvard Gazette. This article is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University’s official newspaper.