Just what does the Department of Homeland Security do?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
By Carl Braun
Examiner.com
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers
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Employing some 218,000 Americans and managing a budget larger than some third world countries ($61.3BB), the question arises; just what does the Department of Homeland Security do?The agency, forged from the tangled steel of September 11th, is charged with protecting the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is the nation’s largest government employer dwarfing the previous record holder, the IRS at a mere 93,000 and it manages the efforts of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection and a myriad of sub agencies each with specific responsibilities to keep us safe.
But what does that mean? Keep us safe? Here is a summary of activities the Department of Homeland Security engages in every single day.
DHS processes an average of 1.1 million passengers and pedestrians, including 670,000 foreign visitors arriving through our Nation’s ports of entry every day.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screens approximately 2 million passengers, 1.8 million pieces of checked baggage, intercept nearly 18,000 prohibited items, including 3,000 knives and 200 other dangerous items at airport security checkpoints, every day.
They screen more than 100,000 foreign visitors against the biometric watch list containing more than 4.8 million known or suspected terrorists, criminals and immigration violators. Yep, that’s right...every day.
Customs scans more than 71,000 incoming cargo containers and trucks at ports of entry for radiological/nuclear material.
The United States Secret Service, another DHS agency, protects dozens of high profile government officials including the President, the Vice President, visiting heads of state, and former Presidents.
DHS siezes more than $110,000 in counterfeit currency worldwide and open 20 new financial crimes and counterfeit investigations worldwide.
The Border Patrol and Customs & Border Protection apprehends an average of 1,983 people crossing illegally into the United States every day. That’s 716,495 per year.
ICE makes an average of 189 administrative arrests, 78 criminal arrests, and remove over 900 aliens from the United States everyday or 328,500 deported aliens per year.
They run a National Operations Center, retrieve hundreds of biological monitoring units and have time left over to save an average of 13 lives, 84 people in distress, and conduct 6 search and rescue missions in the maritime environment. They guard 160,000 miles of pipeline carrying hazardous materials and before the sun sets each day, on average, they have naturalized 4,207 freshly minted Americans (1,535,555 per year).
Truly an amazing fete.
Yet one gaping hole still exists, particularly along our southern border with a lawless neighbor and we cannot be safe until that hole is plugged up. The DHS report for years 2008-2010 showed there will be no new fence in the next year. According to published reports DHS revised that just yesterday indicating that we will go from 815 miles of “effectively controlled border” to at least 894 in 2010. Despite comments by DHS Secretary Napolitano, the new bollard style fence is working and wherever it has been deployed illegal traffic is down to a trickle. The increases in manpower along the Mexican border are having the desired effect as well. But not for along. The Department of Homeland Security plans to reassign 384 Border Patrol Agents from the Southern Border to the line with Canada; a move which has many scratching their heads.
"Border miles under effective control" is defined by CBP as meaning "when the appropriate mix of personnel, equipment, technology and tactical infrastructure has been deployed to reasonably ensure that when an attempted illegal entry is detected, the Border Patrol has the ability to identify, classify and respond to bring the attempted illegal entry to a satisfactory law enforcement resolution."
The Border Patrol is responsible for 8,607 miles of border and coastline (not counting the Alaska/Canada border).
You can do the math. That is one HUGE hole in our national security.
Carl Braun is an analyst for the Homeland Security Policy Institute Group and he's logged 5,000-plus hours on the border. He has written several books including his most recent on Border Insecurity, “Above All Else”
. Contact Carl at Carl.Braun@BPAUX.org.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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