DHS Hits the 20-Year Mark
A bloated behemoth unable and/or unwilling to do the job Congress gave it
By Andrew R. Arthur on March 3, 2023
On November 25, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act (HSA) of 2002. As a staffer, I worked on the HSA and, among other things, it abolished my former employer, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A failure to enforce the immigration laws led to passage of the HSA, but it’s difficult, two decades on, to think of it as much more than a noble, but failed, experiment.
Amnesty and September 11th. Even before September 11, 2001, many on Capitol Hill had begun the process of “reorganizing” the INS to improve its performance.
Proposals were sketched out on yellow legal pads to separate out the enforcement programs at the agency (Border Patrol, detention and removal, intelligence, investigations, and inspections) from the adjudications branches, and to place an experienced law-enforcement professional in charge of the former.
That change was borne out of a concern that individuals who did not believe in the enforcement mission of the agency could potentially hijack it and refuse to apply the laws as written.
https://cis.org/Arthur/DHS-Hits-20Year-Mark
