Former DHS chiefs: New public safety agency needed

Former heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) called for a public safety agency to be established on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks .

In a joint interview with NBC News on Thursday, former DHS Secretaries Michael Chertoff and Jeh Johnson discussed the current direction of the agency, which they both said “has gotten off track.”

Johnson, who served under former President Obama from 2013 to 2017, said he believes the agency needs “a reset.”

“When I stepped into the job of secretary in 2013, the department was still, I think, viewed primarily as security,” he said. “Now I fear in many communities DHS has become a pariah, radioactive, the department of mass deportations, heartless, locking up kids, and that is one of the reasons why I think we need a reset.”

The Deportation Data Project found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which falls under the DHS, had arrested 49,571 people in July, the highest such number during President Trump’s second term.

Chertoff and Johnson asked for any agency that did not fall under the realm of public safety to be spun off, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, resembling a European model of public safety ministries.

Chertoff, who served under former President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2009, said he believed it “would help the Cabinet secretary deconflict, unify and achieve a common effort of priorities in terms of where to protect the country and how to reduce the most serious threats that we would be facing.”

“We’re spending most of our time worrying about gardeners and home health aides and getting them thrown out of the country, as opposed to focusing on people that actually are doing a lot of damage,” he added.

Their comments come as America mourns the loss of 2,977 lives in the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.; and at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

When asked if the modern DHS could handle another attack of this magnitude, Johnson said he believes it could because “we are better at tracking who enters the country.”

“The problem, however, is the terrorist threat morphed, and the DHS that Secretary Chertoff and I led years ago is not equipped to deal with that form of domestic terrorism,” he said.

DHS did not respond to The Hill’s request for immediate comment.