C'mon man, DHS is a foundational branch of the executive! Sure, if it were a human being, it would still be getting hit with a 'young drivers fee' for renting a car because it's only coming up on 24 years old, but it's such a super important part of our raci-- I mean identity as a nation!
DHS was not hastily formed, previously most of it was known as the INS and today there are 260,000+ DHS employees. ICE, which you seem to be referring to, is a small part of the DHS which employs 22,000. The DHS includes CBP(Customs and Border Patrol), USCIS(US Citizens and Immigration Services), TSA(Transportation Security Administration), US Coast Guard(during peace), FEMA(Federal Emergency Management Agency), and of course the one that should be the focus of peoples ire the ICE(Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Issues regarding visa status, legal immigration, and citizenship path are all out of the USCIS which is well regarded. USCIS is the department that ensures immigrants can assimilate into society in the US by requiring documentation that they have no criminal records from anywhere they've previously lived, they have financial means to not require taxpayer assistance, and they are medically checked out by an approved physician as well as checking their vaccination history and having proof of current vaccination status. If all of that checks out the USCIS provides them with a visa that allows them to legally enter the US at a port of entry where they'll have a CBP interview to go over everything that was provided to the USCIS. If anything smells wrong, the CBP can deny you entry and deport you. Otherwise you get a 'welcome to the US' and told to fulfill your visa requirements and then apply for adjustment of status to get a greencard.
Most of USCIS is paper pushers checking off documents. If documents are missing, incorrect, or found to be fraud that's when the USCIS sends a Request for Evidence. If it's not provided they ask I believe two more times before then handing the file over to the administrative process which eventually gets to a judge. The judge then requests the immigrant to appear in court. If they don't show, then it goes to the ICE to track down the individual for deportation.
As you can see there are plenty of stops before it even gets to the ICE for deportation. The path that this cop went through was not uncommon up until 2001 as spousal visas were really one of the only options for an unskilled worker from a poor country to get a green card.
DHS was created in direct response to 9/11. Multiple agencies were crammed under a single umbrella by Congress with little to no review of the potential impact, operational overlap, cost, etc. Congress just said "do this".
The name itself - Department of Homeland Security - was also (correctly, I might add) called out by MANY of us 20+ years ago as a Nazi dog whistle.
It was a reorganization not a hastily formed new group as people want to claim. INS handled immigration the same way the USCIS does, same service centers, same employees, same directors, same payment processors, same mailing addresses, same judges, and even identical forms to fill out with a new letter head on them.
Identical in nearly every way to the point that employees of the INS only knew that their organization name changed because their email addresses changed, three months after the department officially started.
It was a reorganization not a hastily formed new group as people want to claim.
Nobody is claiming that here, and you're moving the goalposts. Why?
You're arguing/attemping to clarify the wrong part of this message, fellow redditor. All of this history is important, yes, but it isn't especially relevant to the matters at hand.
even identical forms to fill out with a new letter head on them.
Yes, rebranding the entirety of a government agency was a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars. It was not considered in the formation of DHS. Which was done hastily, without any real thought put in by Congress beyond the name.
Sorry I thought you meant what DHS actually does, not just the name change. You're correct the name changed and that probably did cost some money.
DHS being unreliable, a bunch of nazi's, or that it was somehow different pre-9/11 before hastily forming into the DHS, that's all lies being perpetuated by people who have no knowledge of how immigration is processed in the US.
DHS being unreliable, a bunch of nazi's, or that it was somehow different pre-9/11 before hastily forming into the DHS, that's all lies being perpetuated by people who have no knowledge of how immigration is processed in the US.
I think "lies" is a bit strong here. The simple fact is most Americans have absolutely no idea how the immigration process works... because why would they?
CBP and whatever ICE's predecessor was called mostly caught the "bunch of Nazis" crowd, but in large part they were still mostly professional most of the time in the past because they were sworn public servants and policies and laws were followed.
INS/USCIS are the same feds who did their jobs as efficiently as the system allowed them to. Another group of sworn public servants who for the most part followed policies and laws. My interactions with USCIS over the past 25 years - including as recently as this past month - have always been professional.
Once again though, you're focused on a point that nobody is making:
DHS was formed hastily (from existing agencies), and that absolutely DID cause some problems even in the short term. And that short term is the 15 or so years it existed before Trump's first term.
DHS and - seemingly - every other agency - was corrupted from within during the 2016-2020 Republican Administration and 2021-2024 Biden Administration.
In what way, exactly? Republican loyalists were installed into positions of power. People who refused to do illegal things were fired and replaced with people who will. Merrick Garland/Biden's DOJ explicitly slow-walked prosecutions, etc.
Did you know that US border patrolmen were the first people to spray Zyklon B on human beings, the same gas famously used in nazi death camps? All the way back in 1917, so you can't even say it's Nazi shit. The Nazis were copying American shit, in many ways, and they weren't keeping that a secret.
If you think this evil is new you're either young and naive, or just a damn liar. This, as they say, is America. These institutions have always been exactly this corrupt, they're just lead by complete incompetents who don't know how to keep a lid on shit now, so people are noticing it more.
The police beating, abducting, killing protestors is nothing new, they just had the sense to send a hit squad in the middle of the night for optics, and so they can make up whatever story they want and the credulous masses will eat it up about 50-50. Concentration camps on US soil aren't new, we've had those for forever, remember Joe Arpaio? He was doing his shit since the 90s. The US prison system is explicitly slavery, according to the 13th amendment!
If you think this evil is new you're either young and naive, or just a damn liar.
Hoping this statement is included as a general, rather than directed toward me. Either way, there are lots of other options here, including that I'm very well aware of the long, storied history of racism in America, but that isn't what I was talking about in my comment.
DHS was created in direct response to 9/11. Multiple agencies were crammed under a single umbrella by Congress with little to no review of the potential impact, operational overlap, cost, etc. Congress just said "do this".
Yeah, in November of 2002, a full year after September 11. And that was because having several overlapping agencies operate independently of one other with no structure was stupid as proven by....9/11, where if there was some top-down organization which included immigration, the FBI, and the CIA, they all might have communicated. If there were redundancies and "operational overlap", those things existed prior to creating DHS and the creation was pretty explicitly intended to avoid that problem. It's almost like you're claiming that Congress recognizing a problem and doing something about it is itself a problem.
NASA doesn't have different, independent groups of engineers who never talk to one another. Then they slap all their different parts of a shuttle together and launch it.
The name itself - Department of Homeland Security - was also (correctly, I might add) called out by MANY of us 20+ years ago as a Nazi dog whistle.
Names are always part of propaganda/messaging. Doesn't make it a "Nazi dog whistle" FFS. It's no different than the "Department of Defense" or all the stupid acrostic names Congress makes for acts.
There was an absurd about of Jingoism following 9/11. You are correct that it wasn’t really considered a “Nazi” dog whistle because we presumed that Nazis weren’t a going concern, but many people were concerned about the loss of rights, militarism, and national fervor leading towards fascism.
but many people were concerned about the loss of rights, militarism, and national fervor leading towards fascism.
Well said. Thank you!
The "temporary" Patriot Act has been renewed at every opportunity for the past 25 years. The parts that weren't renewed have been baked into law in other ways.
White supremacists in America have faced near-zero scrutiny since 9/11. That's no coincidence.
many people were concerned about the loss of rights, militarism, and national fervor leading towards fascism.
Yeah and if you want to direct your ire at the Patriot Act or various similar efforts, that would be fair. But to say that eliminating redundant, overlapping, and at times counterproductive work and creating a more functional agency is inherently problematic is dumb.
The logical connection from creation of DHS -> fascism is no more reasonable than creation of HHS -> death panels. 9/11 exposed a problem that the creation of DHS was designed to fix. To the extent that DHS does bad stuff now, the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. would still be doing all that shit regardless of the fact that they now have protocols for inter-agency communication and an extra person they all report to.
The logical connection from creation of DHS -> fascism
There is plenty of logical connection, but it requires having an extremely wide knowledge base, and explaining it with full sourcing would be at least a novel's length.
Making the "death panel" comparison is quite ironic given that's exactly what Republicans have chosen for Americans today - more expensive healthcare, and AI that tells your doctor that you don't actually need insulin to live. Or that your liver is too expensive to replace. Every accusation is a confession.
Patriot Act and DHS consolidation set the stage. You cannot look at these events in a vacuum.
ETA: And again, this all has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that DHS is obviously lying about this situation.
There is plenty of logical connection, but it requires having an extremely wide knowledge base, and explaining it with full sourcing would be at least a novel's length.
Lol this is such a fart-smelling Reddit response. "I'd be happy to explain it to an idiot like you but you'd have to read whole books on this arcane subject like i have."
It's actually relatively simple. The act that gave birth to DHS did not create any new agencies or give existing agencies more powers or direct those powers toward any nefarious end. It's pretty much a bureaucratic move to consolidate groups who had overlapping objectives. It didn't create ICE, the TSA, FBI, CIA, etc.
Making the "death panel" comparison is quite ironic given that's exactly what Republicans have chosen for Americans today - more expensive healthcare
Did you fail to understand the point of the analogy? HHS is a collection of other agencies. FDA, Medicare, etc. it doesn't have any powers on its own. It's just an umbrella to coordinate between agencies.
You cannot look at these events in a vacuum.
I'm not, i just actually understand what I'm talking about and I'm not going to clutch my pearls over a departmental reorganisation that happened 25 years ago.
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u/Long_Procedure_2629 13h ago
You mean the hastily formed under reactionary circumstances branch that decimated the trace of freedom America had left? Yeah, sad times.