Department of Homeland Overreach? It’s your government so go change it!

By Sevan Gerard

Although the Department of Homeland Security has been in existence in its current configuration since only 2003, it has grown faster than any other federal department and to a gargantuan size. This growth is aimed to span a broad gamete of civil domestic threats. DHS constitutes the most diverse merger of federal functions and responsibilities, incorporating twenty-two government agencies into a single organization.

With more than 240,000 employees, and possibly as many contractors, DHS is the third largest Cabinet Department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. As a consortium of twenty two security related agencies, DHS is able to provide broad tactical resources to deal with specific threats to the homeland through law enforcement and counter-terrorism, to border protection and immigration.

The argument can be made however that a few high threat disciplines are not fully integrated into the current department configuration. The most significant of these threats include climate change, information technology and robust executive policy and legislative analysis to predict future political threats.

Furthermore, an additional argument against the compartmentalization and centralization of our civil defense and protection into a single Department of Homeland Security can also be made.

The risk associated with a single department handling all of our national security needs is the tendency to concentrate on a few large threats or issues and to ignore or overlook the smaller, lower impacting but more frequent threats to our national security. The smaller more subtle incursions into our safety and security impact every other federal Executive Department, which are subjected to distinct threats and have specific security needs to assure the safe continuity and proper functioning of their disciplines. If any of these departments were significantly impacted, there would be security concerns.

If DHS were to handle all homeland security threats and risks, then the department of agriculture, for example, would fully rely on a DHS initiative to resolve the consequences of a systemic crop scarcity issue resulting in hunger driven civil unrest. DHS may house the resources to tactically deal with the unrest but may lack subject matter expertise to prevent and mitigate the stimulus. A multi-departmental approach would be indispensable. An example which highlights the use of subject matter expertise outside DHS in meeting domestic security needs is the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence of the Department of the Treasury. The tracing and tracking of money moving around the world is essential to understanding the threats to our security, but since this does not fall under DHS, that information, which is essential to treat assessments, may not be collected with the relevance necessary for DHS to prevent, mitigate or abate a threat.

Finally, from a more philosophical perspective, our security is not an end in and of itself but nearly the means of reaching a truly inspired life worth living. Creating a department with the power and budget that DHS has, suggests the existence of a security state, where like a dog chasing its tail, one can eternally pursue the finality of being secure, with the risk of losing ones freedom rather than remembering that homeland security, as a discipline, should be no more than a support function to ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sevan Gerard is a co-founder of Homeland XYZ. His peers refer to him as the Renaissance Man. His professional life has spanned the private, public, non-profit and political sectors. He is a successful entrepreneur and consultant in product and service innovation, a startup CEO, an environmental security non-profit founder, a vocational and academic educator, a once city council member and a proud public servant. Sevan has worked as a firefighter/paramedic in Los Angeles over the last decade and is the deputy commander of the LA Disaster Medical Assistance Team. He is currently a graduate student at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security of the Naval Postgraduate School. Homeland XYZ was developed in collaboration with members of his cohort to introduce a writing platform for students to publish and for crowdsourcing answers to difficult Homeland Security questions.

See other articles by Homeland XYZ:

• The U.S. Drone Court: Are U.S. Citizens Constitutionally Protected From Targeted Drone Attacks?
• Body Cameras — Officer, Watch Your P’s and Q’s
• How to Defeat ISIS: Death by Chocolate
• Is It Time to Change Sentencing Rules?
• The Autonomous Motor Vehicle — Friend or Foe?
• Another Day in the Life of a North Korean Leader
• Is Transportation Passenger Safety a Homeland Security Issue?
• SCAPEGOAT
• North Korea in Space!?

Follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube Channel and join our blog!