Department of Homeland Security

Audio readout of this profile.

Overview

The Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States Government created in 2002 to consolidate domestic-security functions previously distributed across more than twenty separate agencies. It is the third-largest cabinet department by personnel — more than 240,000 employees — and houses more than a dozen operational and support components, including the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Secret Service.¹

The Department's intelligence functions are concentrated in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), which is the Intelligence Community member representing the Department, and in component-level intelligence offices. I&A is responsible for strategic intelligence support to the Secretary, the components, state and local partners through fusion centers, and the broader Intelligence Community.²

History & Origins

The Department was established by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, signed into law by President George W. Bush on 25 November 2002, and stood up on 1 March 2003. It represented the largest reorganisation of the federal executive branch since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947, consolidating components from the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration into a single cabinet department.³

The Department was created in direct response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and the recommendations of the Hart–Rudman Commission and successor reviews. The 9/11 Commission's 2004 report subsequently recommended further changes to the Department's intelligence structure, leading to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.⁴

The Department's first decade was dominated by the build-out of the new operational components, the establishment of fusion centers as joint federal–state–local intelligence-sharing nodes, and the post-Hurricane Katrina (2005) reorganisation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Successive administrations — Obama, Trump, and Biden — have each substantially reshaped the Department's policy posture, particularly on immigration enforcement.⁵

Mandate & Jurisdiction

The Department's authorities derive from the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and from the statutes governing each predecessor component. Its core functions are:

• prevention of terrorism and enhancement of security;
• enforcement of US immigration laws;
• safeguarding and management of US borders;
• safeguarding cyberspace and US critical infrastructure;
• preparation for, response to, and recovery from disasters.⁶

The Department's intelligence component, I&A, has statutory authority for the Department's Intelligence Community membership and for intelligence support to state, local, tribal, territorial, and private-sector partners. I&A is the only IC element whose primary statutory mission is sharing intelligence with state, local, tribal, territorial, and private-sector partners. The United States Coast Guard Intelligence is the Department's other IC member, with a distinct mission focused on maritime intelligence.

Notable Operations

Confirmed Fusion Centers (2003–present). The network of state and major-urban-area Fusion Centers — currently 80 in number — is the principal mechanism for federal–state–local intelligence sharing in the United States. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' bipartisan 2012 report identified specific concerns about the value of Fusion Center reporting to federal counter-terrorism work, the cost-effectiveness of the programme, and instances of First Amendment-protected activity being inappropriately reported.⁷

Confirmed Operation Diligent Valor (2020, Portland). The deployment of federal officers from CBP, ICE, and the Federal Protective Service to Portland, Oregon, in summer 2020 in response to protests outside the federal courthouse. The deployment produced sustained controversy over the use of unmarked vehicles and identification, the seizure of protesters by personnel without identifiable agency markings, and the broader question of federal authorities at protest activity. Successive DHS OIG reviews (principal report: OIG-21-31, April 2021; earlier training memo November 2020) identified specific shortcomings in deployment authorities, training, and command and control.⁸

Confirmed Family separation policy (2018). The Department's implementation of the "zero-tolerance" border policy of April–June 2018, under which children were separated from parents arriving at the US southwest border, produced at least 5,400 documented separations, with subsequent Task Force reviews identifying additional cases and a sustained domestic and international response. The HHS Inspector General's January 2019 report and successive litigation in Ms. L v. ICE documented the operational and policy record. The policy was formally rescinded by Executive Order in June 2018; reunifications continued for years afterward.⁹

Confirmed Cyber-security and CISA operations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, established in November 2018 from the predecessor National Protection and Programs Directorate, has been the lead federal agency for civilian cyber-security defence. CISA's most prominent public role to date was the post-2020 election security and disinformation work, which produced the November 2020 joint statement that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history" — and the subsequent removal of CISA Director Christopher Krebs by the Trump administration.¹⁰

Controversies & Abuses

Confirmed I&A reporting on journalists and protesters (2020). The Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis produced "Open Source Intelligence Reports" in summer 2020 that included information drawn from social-media posts of journalists who had reported on Department operations. The reporting was suspended after public disclosure; the Department's Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis was reassigned. Subsequent congressional and IG reviews concluded the reporting had exceeded I&A's authorities.¹¹

Confirmed Fusion Center over-reporting concerns. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' 2012 bipartisan report on Fusion Centers identified specific cases of First Amendment-protected activity being reported as intelligence concerns and concluded that Fusion Center reporting was, in many cases, of little intelligence value. The report has been a persistent reference in subsequent academic and policy debate.⁷

Confirmed Family separation. See Operations. The HHS IG report and subsequent litigation in Ms. L v. ICE established the substantive operational record. Subsequent Justice Department IG report (2021) identified specific failures of departmental coordination and policy planning preceding the policy's implementation.⁹

Confirmed CBP / Border Patrol use of force and conditions of detention. Successive DHS IG reports, GAO audits, and federal-court findings have identified specific concerns regarding CBP detention conditions, use-of-force incidents, and corruption — including the prosecutions of multiple Border Patrol agents on charges including bribery, drug-trafficking, and abuse of detainees.¹²

Notable Figures

• Tom Ridge — First Secretary of Homeland Security, 2003–2005. Stood up the Department.
• Michael Chertoff — Secretary, 2005–2009. Hurricane Katrina period and the early build-out of the operational components.
• Janet Napolitano — Secretary, 2009–2013. Period of Real ID implementation and substantial CBP and ICE expansion.
• Jeh Johnson — Secretary, 2013–2017.
• John Kelly / Kirstjen Nielsen / Kevin McAleenan / Chad Wolf — Trump-era Secretaries and Acting Secretaries, 2017–2021. The Government Accountability Office concluded in 2020 that the appointments of Wolf and Cuccinelli were unlawful under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.¹³
• Alejandro Mayorkas — Secretary, 2021–2025. Period of the I&A reporting controversy and the post-2021 immigration reorganisations.

Oversight & Accountability

The Department is subject to oversight by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the House Homeland Security Committee, the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, the Senate Judiciary and House Judiciary Committees (for immigration components), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (for I&A specifically), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the DHS Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office, and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

The DHS Inspector General publishes the largest volume of public-record audits of any federal IG office, reflecting the Department's size and the breadth of its operational components.¹⁴

Sources & Further Reading

1. Homeland Security Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-296; DHS, "About DHS," dhs.gov; Office of Personnel Management, FedScope employment statistics.
2. DHS, "Office of Intelligence and Analysis," dhs.gov/office-intelligence-and-analysis; Office of the Director of National Intelligence, U.S. National Intelligence: An Overview.
3. Homeland Security Act of 2002; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (Government Printing Office, 2004).
4. Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Pub. L. 108-458.
5. House Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina, A Failure of Initiative, February 2006; Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, Pub. L. 109-295.
6. Homeland Security Act of 2002, sections 101–102.
7. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Federal Support for and Involvement in State and Local Fusion Centers," October 2012.
8. Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, "DHS Personnel Inappropriately Used Aerial Surveillance to Identify Protests in Portland and Other Locations," and "DHS Operations During the 2020 Portland, Oregon Demonstrations," subsequent OIG reviews 2020–2022.
9. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Separated Children Placed in Office of Refugee Resettlement Care, OEI-BL-18-00511, January 2019; Ms. L v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, S.D. Cal. 18-cv-428, ongoing class action.
10. Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees, 12 November 2020; CISA, "About CISA," cisa.gov.
11. "DHS Compiled 'Intelligence Reports' on Journalists Who Published Leaked Documents," Washington Post, 30 July 2020; statements of Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, July–August 2020.
12. DHS Office of the Inspector General, recurring reports on CBP custody conditions, 2018–present; Department of Justice, United States v. prosecutions of CBP personnel.
13. Government Accountability Office, "Department of Homeland Security — Legality of Service of Acting Secretary of Homeland Security and Service of Senior Official Performing the Duties of Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security," B-331650, 14 August 2020.
14. DHS Office of the Inspector General, Semiannual Report to Congress, successive editions; Government Accountability Office, DHS High-Risk List updates, biennial editions.