"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, proposed this week to cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security until it "reins in the authoritarian ICE secret police." It's a good idea but far too modest. A better proposal would be to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security altogether."
"DHS began as a bill by Sen. Joe Lieberman, not long after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to show that Democrats could be as hard-nosed as Republicans about fighting terrorism. The idea was to take every federal agency even remotely involved in counterterrorism and combine them into one super-department. Then-President George W. Bush initially opposed the legislation, saying it would just pile on another layer of bureaucracy."
Rep. Dan Goldman proposed cutting all Department of Homeland Security funding until the department reins in ICE. A better proposal would be to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security. DHS was created in 2002 from a bill by Sen. Joe Lieberman after the Sept. 11 attacks to consolidate agencies involved in counterterrorism. Then-President George W. Bush initially opposed the legislation as bureaucratic expansion, but the 9/11 Commission urged consolidation after citing intelligence-sharing failures. The FBI and CIA were excluded from DHS and instead strengthened their counterterrorism units and coordination. DHS subsumed twenty-two agencies from eight departments, concentrating authority tied to immigration enforcement problems.
Read at Slate Magazine
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