Time for another reality check!
The Department of Homeland Security, founded just after 9/11, has the following stated mission:
“We will lead the unified national effort to secure America. We will prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation. We will ensure safe and secure borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and promote the free-flow of commerce.”
Source: Department of Homeland Security
The DHS does its best to make sure that its public image is closely associated with combating terrorism. This would make sense, given that the executive branch gives this agency the authority to encroach upon many lower levels of government, interfering and overriding operations of local police, politicians, and other public servants. This department is in charge of many actions authorized by the PATRIOT Acts, which ignore the Bill of Rights and violate citizens’ civil liberties as long as the administration deems them “enemy combatants.” Given no threat whatsoever, no American would submit to such intrusions. But given counterterrorism as an excuse, some are willing to sacrifice such liberties since they believe they have nothing to hide.
But alas, the DHS is not spending a smidge of time on counterterrorism, beyond the PR rallying cries and color-coded terrorism threat levels that garner continuing support through fear. (I won’t even starton that tragic irony.) TRAC, a non-partisan, independent organization that gathers information on federal spending, staffing, and engorcement, has released a report on the Department of Homeland Security’s actions. The report focuses on immigration courts, which should be a large part of international counterterrorism efforts. But of the 814,073 charges made in the last three years, only twelve were for terrorism. That’s 0.0015% – not even two thousandths of one percent. In other numbers, that is 1.5 people for every 100,000 charged by the DHS.
Now I realize that the DHS is responsible for many duties formerly carried out by the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, so immigration courts will have to deal with smaller issues. But an organization founded on preventing terrorism is undeniably:
- Not doing its job
- Hiding their true actions from Americans.
I dare say that that thousandth of a percent is all that it takes to get a country to blindly give up their rights and accept a police state.