Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has suggested eliminating the Department of Homeland Security.
Her motivation seems to be reducing federal immigration enforcement powers, although it doesn’t necessarily follow that abolishing the DHS would actually accomplish this.
Nevertheless, the DHS is just yet an other cabinet level agency pushed to facilitate even more government spending, and has never been necessary. Its abolition would be a step in the right direction.
The thing about raising government agencies to cabinet-level status is that the move makes it easier for the bureaucrats in charge of the agencies to politically agitate for more government spending in their favor, and to push bigger government in general. It’s no coincidence that as the US government has grown ever larger and more intrusive, so has the number of cabinet-level agencies. So now, we have the EPA, the SBA, and the departments of HUD, Energy, and Education all provided with more direct access to the president and the media. Everything they do is deemed “essential.” Everything they do, we’re told, is a matter of national importance.
DHS is no different. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, they exposed the sheer incompetence, laziness, and inefficiency of government security and defense organizations. Year after year, hundreds of billions of dollars were poured into these organizations — in addition to the countless billions spent on the Pentagon. But when they were shown to be asleep at the switch, what happened? Rather than have their budgets cut, and senior officials fired in droves — as should have happened — George W. Bush and his cronies decided that what the federal government really needed was a new department into which billions more in taxpayer money could be poured.
The was politically important in the sense that making DHS a department made it easier to call for every more funding for its constituent agencies. But much of what the department does was already done before 9/11 — including immigration regulation.
What was new was the federalization of airport security, and new slush funds for domestic police departments.
In a 2017 article titled “Four Agencies to Abolish along with the Dept. of Education,” I put DHS first on the list (followed by the EPA, Interior, and Agriculture):
One: The Department of Homeland Security, $51 Billion
Somehow, the United States managed to get along for more than 225 years before this Department was created by Congress and the Bush Administration in 2002.
The Department quickly became a way for the federal government to spread federal taxpayer dollars to state and local law enforcement agencies , thus gaining greater control at the local level. The DHS administers a number of grant programs that have helped to purchase a variety of new toys for law enforcement groups including new weapons, and new technologies. Also included in this is the infamous military surplus program which is supplies tanks and other military equipment to police forces everywhere from big cities to small rural towns. The crime-free town of Keene, New Hampshire made sure its police received a tank through this program as have many larger cities.
When the Orlando gunman opened fire in the Pulse nightclub in 2016, the police eventually rolled up in a tank — which did nothing to stem the bloodshed inside the club.
Police claim they need these half-million-dollar vehicles from the DHS to deal with civil unrest. Never mind, of course, that every state already has a National Guard force specifically for that purpose.
While the Department was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, the Department does nothing to address anything like a 9/11-style attack, and all the agencies that were supposed to provide intelligence on such attacks — the FBI for instance — already exist in other departments and continue to enjoy huge budgets.
DHS also includes agencies that already existed in other departments before, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the agencies that handle immigration and customs. Those agencies should either be returned to the departments they came from or be abolished.
And, few would miss the Transportation Security Administration — an agency that has never caught a single terrorist, but has smuggled at least $100 million worth of cocaine.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is usually wrong about pretty much everything. But on this she’s accidentally correct: abolishing the DHS would be a net good for America. It was never necessary, and is mostly a channel for violating the rights of Americans through a de facto standing army of federal agencies and local cops pumped up on federal dollars and military equipment. Politicians in Washington DC would hate to see it go. But the taxpayers would likely benefit were it to disappear forever.
