ACLU Says Split Department of Homeland Security While Hiding Pro-Migration Agenda

Raymondville, UNITED STATES: Male detainees walk to a gate inside Homeland Security's Will
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images
Neil Munro

The Department of Homeland Security must be dismantled and partially defunded, says an op-ed by the far-left director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Dismantling DHS, breaking it apart into various federal agencies, and shrinking its allocation of federal dollars will allow for more effective oversight, accountability and public transparency,” says the USAToday op-ed by ACLU director Anthony Romero, the son of migrants from Puerto Rica.

The op-ed comes as pro-migration groups lobby Congress to split the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) bureau from the DHS’s enforcement agencies, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.

Their goal is to make the USCIS into “even more of a rubber-stamp” for Fortune 500 employers and migrants, and a political ally for pro-migration groups, said Mark Krikorian, director for the Center for Immigraiton Studies.

Romero hinted at this pro-migration goal in a short passage saying, “Why, for example, is an agency responsible for citizenship and immigration under a threat-oriented department? Immigrants are not a threat to the ‘homeland.'”

‘The fact is that USCIS has a hybrid enforcement/service function,” said Krikorian. “Obviously, if they’re going to give out green cards and citizenship, it is their obligation to do the best they can to not allow liars and fraudsters to get those benefits.”

Critics have long argued that the DHS’s complex structure was intended to minimize public recognition of its role as the bridge for foreign workers to get into the United States. In fact, the agency’s fragmented authority is also fragmented among several other agencies, so minimizing enforcement and public oversight while the Fortune 500 CEOs hire and import workers from overseas.

This fragmented oversight of the worker importation programs has allowed Fortune 500 CEOs to hide their population of roughly one million visa workers, and also to train hundreds of thousands of visa workers to take U.S. jobs back to India. This policy has pushed more than a million Americans out of good jobs and careers, while also boosting progressives and their allies on Wall Street.

This month, President Donald Trump directed USCIS and the Department of Labor to share information they have long kept in isolated databases.

“If we are talking about reorganization, it would make a lot more sense to pull all the immigration-related functions from DHS, state, labor, health and human services, and from justice, and have one immigration department that does everything,” said Krikorian. That would make oversight “a lot easier” for Congress, he said.

However, Romero minimized any mention of immigration, and focused his criticism on the DHS’s role in proacting the U.S. courthouse from Antifa attacks:

People across the political spectrum watched in disbelief as federal agents were deployed to American cities — despite objections by mayors and governors — to escalate violence against protesters. Paramilitary forces abducted people exercising their constitutional rights in Portland, placed them in unmarked vehicles and took them to undisclosed locations.
…

… we know that DHS has surveilled Black Lives Matter activist circles; descended into mosques and community centers to infiltrate Muslim communities; shot and killed foreign nationals across the border; and monitored protests using fusion center intelligence sharing hubs.

To make his case, Romero wrote up comments from former President George W. Bush’s pro-migration deputies, all of whom have gained from Romero’s tactic of hiding the immigration numbers — and the money — behind hot-button debates over terrorism and border security. Romero wrote:

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security, said recently that DHS “wasn’t designed to become the president’s personal militia.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asserted that President Donald Trump’s deployment of agents to U.S. cities is “damaging to the department.”

And Richard Clarke, who served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, has called for dismantling DHS.

In fact, both the New York Times and the Washington Post have complied with the same don’t-mention-the-money rule when writing profiles of the current acting chief of DHS, Chad Wolf.

“Open borders isn’t really the right label for those people,” said Krikorian.

“It is more accurate to say they support unlimited immigration,” while the government funds visible border defenses and enforcement, he said. “Americans have no right to limit the number of people coming into the United States.”

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