Calls for DHS to be shuttered permanently as agency's original aim has been lost: analysis

The Department of Homeland Security should be closed down permanently by the next president, a political analyst has argued.

The Senate and House have yet to strike a deal on reopening the DHS, which has so far been closed for 48 days. It marks the longest shutdown in the agency's history, and some political analysts are questioning whether it is needed at all. Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, suggested the DHS had run its course.

She told Salon, "It [the DHS] actually does have a lot of oversight mechanisms built in, but they haven’t functioned particularly well, and they haven’t been able to meaningfully constrain law enforcement abuses over the course of the department’s history, but particularly so now, and the administration has pretty easily discarded them.

"They’ll put out these bulletins that are based on some random social media posts, and then create this kind of very threatening environment, which obviously would have consequences for how law enforcement on the ground would respond and from the fusion center side as well.

"There’s definitely been a huge flood of unverified, not high quality information coming into DHS. Whether or not that system actually provides any counterterrorism benefit, I think, is really, really questionable."

Further analysis from Patel and Salon columnist Russell Payne suggested the department had lost its way, and the original aims established during its founding were now overshadowed by matters of immigration.

Payne wrote, "Patel said that over the past 24 years, since DHS’s founding, its counterterrorism mission has been eclipsed by immigration enforcement and emergency response duties, in large part due to a lack of real terror threats against the United States.

"There are also valid questions, Patel said, about what the department’s countererror offices are even accomplishing." Further criticism of the DHS has been outlined by Chris Edwards, the Kilts Family Chair in Fiscal Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, who argued that much of the workload could be outsourced to private companies.

"The model is the Canadian system, which is run by a nonprofit private organization,” Edwards said. “In most European airports and Canada. The screening is done by private companies that you know are hired, and they compete against each other for contracts, and they’re rated on their performance and that sort of thing.”

Calls for the next president to act against the DHS were made by David Perry, a University of Minnesota historian who believes segmenting the agency is the best course of action.

"Put bureaucracy with bureaucracy, put enforcement with enforcement, separate the [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and give it independence again," he said. "That’s three bullet points. I would like to see those three bullet points in the party platform. I think we can do it."

Payne added, "So far, Democrats have focused their criticisms around ICE and CBP, owing to their deadly and high-profile operation in Minnesota earlier this year. Perry believes, however, that now is the time for potential 2028 candidates to begin discussing what their plan for DHS is."