DHSThe Changing Face of the Department of Homeland Security
DHS has strayed quite far from its original conception, and it has become a tainted brand. Though each move was operationally sensible (save perhaps the latest obsessive focus on immigration), the end result is a department that almost nobody supports. Conservatives fear its internal focus on domestic dissent; liberals, its characteristic as an internal security force. A wholesale restructuring is thus the minimum necessary.
Editor’s note: This piece is part of Lawfare’s collection “9/11 at 25: The Legal Architecture of the War on Terror, Twenty-Five Years On,” examining how 9/11 remains—or doesn’t—embedded in current legal and policy frameworks, a quarter century after the attacks. Read the full collection here.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a shock to the American system. For the first time since Pearl Harbor (or if you prefer historical accuracy, perhaps since the War of 1812), an enemy caused death and destruction in the American homeland.
The result was the single most significant strategic reorientation of American policy since the New Deal/World War II era. The U.S. went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan to take the fight to the enemy. It reorganized intelligence gathering to try to prevent missing signals again.
And, for purposes of internal security, the United States created a massive new department—the Department of Homeland Security—in an effort to unify its domestic law enforcement, counter-terrorism, and border security systems.
For nearly 230 years, the United States operated without a unified internal federal law enforcement presence. It went 230 years, as well, without a unified approach to the national border. On the cusp of 9/11, America’s approach to internal security (which is now called homeland security) was a patchwork of agencies and authorities.
Today, it still is—but less so. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 was a sea change for America. And that change still resonates on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the Department of Homeland Security’s founding. Perhaps even more than the overseas war or the intelligence reorganization, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security continues to have ongoing implications in the United States.
In a crudely symbolic way, those implications were made manifest by a recent announcement from the department on the cusp of the 9/11 anniversary: Where, since its inception, the eagle at the center of the department’s logo had faced toward the peaceful olive branches in one of its talons, Secretary Markwayne Mullin proudly announced that it would now face toward the arrows in its other talon. The department, Mullin declared, was going to war against “bad actors” in our backyard.
