Securing the U.S. Southern Border: an Assessment of the Department of Homeland Security - Case Study Example

Hurricane Katrina – Securing the U.S. Southern Border: An Assessment of the Department of Homeland Security of Introduction As a result of the myriad external and internal threats to security that the United States of America faces, the Department of Homeland security is one of the most watched and discussed among the government departments. Conspicuously, there have been calls from different quarters for the department to enhance the effectiveness of its programs. While a section of the public feels that the Department of Homeland Security has been quite effective in dealing with security issues such as the securing of the southern border and emergencies such as the hurricane Katrina, others are of the opinion that the department is not effective enough in executing its mandate (Bullock, et al., 2008). The core reason for which the Department of Homeland security was formed is to protect the country from attacks by mitigating any external threats any external and attacks. Consequent to this need to mitigate attacks and protect the internal borders of the country, 22 federal agencies were combined to form the Department of Homeland Security. Quite critical among these combined agencies are the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has the mandate to secure the states’ borders. Therefore, the Department of Homeland security heavily relies upon the CBP to secure the borders using a collection of the most technologically advanced operations, devices, and computerized information systems (Bullock, et al., 2008). Important in ensuring border security and emergency responses is effective information and security systems, an area in which the Department of Homeland Security perhaps has the best system in the world (Bullock, et al., 2008). Otherwise, failure to establish high-tech and appropriate information security systems would expose the United States to high-risks of poor response to emergencies and border security breaches. In spite of the technological advances in the DHS’s systems, the information security system of the department has often been blamed for poor responses in emergency cases and failure to effectively protect the southern borders. For instance, if the department’s information security system is not comprehensive enough to protect the stored information and support the operations of the department, such vital information could be leaked to illegal organizations such as drug rings that infiltrate the U.S’s southern borders. Regarding the government’s responses to emergencies, there have been a lot of criticisms on how an emergency such as the Hurricane Katrina was responded to by the Department of Homeland Security. Most outraged by the department’s response to the catastrophe were the victims of the hurricane who continue to wonder how a disaster of such a huge magnitude could occur in such a developed and rich country. Further, most people ask the reason the response, specifically the relief was quite slow. Consequent to the perceived slow relief, a section of the public concluded that the department and the entire government seemingly had an attitude of indifference towards predicament of thousands of the affected (White et al., 2010). The criticism to the manner in which the department responded to Hurricane Katrina has been presented in different forms. These ways include the department’s lack of preparation for natural disasters and the substandard evacuations during such an emergency. In addition, the department’s slow response after the disaster has also been widely criticized. Unpreparedness of the Department of Homeland Security Unpreparedness is perhaps one of the areas in which the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security is most apparent. In fact, with reference to Hurricane Katrina, the unpreparedness of the DHS could be traced to long before the disaster struck. Otherwise, some level of preparedness would have reduced the severity of the disaster’s impacts on the affected regions and people. In other terms, the impact of the calamity was aggravated by the general lack of preparedness of the DHS. Were the department a bit more prepared, fewer lives would have been lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina (White et al., 2010). Although real lessons on preparedness could have been learnt from the earlier case of a simulated hurricane in New Orleans in which the department carried out a response exercise, these lessons were never implemented. For an illustration, the levees protecting the New Orleans area were so poorly maintained and reinforced that they could not sustain the forceful winds of Hurricane Katrina. Notwithstanding that both government and private agencies were responsible for maintain and reinforcing the New Orleans levees, more responsibility and thus blame goes to the Department of Homeland Security, which is the supreme agency mandated to ensure the safety and the security of U.S citizens (Chomsky, 2005). In addition, those in charge of breaches on the levees did not have a warning system to that effect. Besides, unpreparedness, failure to act fast and evacuate the victims of the hurricane has been blamed on the Department of Homeland Security. Consequent to thus slow evacuation of victims, the Hurricane Katrina death toll came to just under 2000. Were the evacuation of the entire population done in a timely manner, more lives would have been saved. Credit should however been given for the smooth manner in which the evacuations were done. However, mandatory evacuation, which would have removed people from the path of the hurricane, was delayed, resulting in more deaths. Because of the delay, many people could not escape the landfall. That the authorities did not fathom or foresee what the conditions would have been after the hurricane resulted in the slowing down of the evacuation and rescue exercises after the storm. Thus, in general terms, the federal government, through its Department of Homeland Security lacked the preparedness to deal with such magnitude of calamity (White et al., 2010). In essence, the DHS did not recognize the significance of Hurricane Katrina, resulting in the slowed and ineffective National Response Plan, which strangely enough, is meant to respond to domestic disasters such as the Hurricane Katrina. Besides the DHS and presidential disaster counsel not giving the President adequate advice on the disaster and the right course of action, the federal agencies involved in the response to the hurricane did not understand their responsibilities in the national response plan. Further to the above weaknesses of the Department of Homeland Security, it may be asserted that the department was merely not prepared for a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina and was thus overwhelmed by the situation and the logistics involved. The supply chains of relief and personnel were particularly stretched to the limit, implying the resources could not be distributed effectively to reach all the victims and affected regions. The source of ineffectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security in references to the Hurricane Katrina was communication failure among federal, state, and local authorities, a scenario, which jeopardized the dissemination of vital information to people on what to do. Protection of the Southern Border Protecting the U.S borders is the other core function of the DHS by which its effectiveness could be assessed. The U.S shares land, rivers, lakes, and coasts with Mexico and Canada. Besides being homes to U.S cities and communities, these borders serve as economic hubs and gateways, thus contributing immensely to the economic growth and prosperity of the US. Thus for economic prosperity and homeland security, it is quite imperative that these borders are protected against illegal immigrants, drugs, contraband, and illicit movement of weapons and people (Perl, 2004). Similarly, for the same reasons, lawful entry and exit of people and economic goods should be promoted across U.S borders. The creation of a safer border environment is thus one of the core duties of the DHS. The DHS seeks to secure the borders by deploying personnel, technology, infrastructure, and collaborating with external and internal agencies and neighbors such as state, local, tribal, territorial partners, Canada, and Mexico. Examples of these partners are Air and Marine agents and the CBP’s Border Patrol agents. As mentioned earlier, these agencies detect and prevent terrorists and illegal weapons from entering the US besides seizing contraband and apprehending criminals. In spite of the tremendous efforts put in place by the Department of Homeland Security, there are still a lot of illegal immigrants, weapons, terrorists, and counterfeit goods finding their way into the United States. That is, the DHS is not fully effective in protecting the borders, more so the southern borders, which drug lords, illegal immigrants, and terrorists, use to enter the country (White et al., 2010). Therefore, the DHS need to do more to secure the southern borders of the country to ensure that homeland security is upheld. To beef up security at the southern border, the US Department of Homeland Security should not only increase border patrol staffs at the borders but also construct new infrastructures such as fences and advanced technologies such as sensors, radar, and aerial assets (Perl, 2004). Though a seemingly expensive exercise, more modernized ports of entry should be constructed at the southern border to improve homeland security. What is more, the DHS should work closely with its partners such as the neighboring security agents and share vital information to realize a more efficient, safer, and more secure southern border. It would not be possible to institute the above reinforcements if the DHS does not recognize the arguments for which the southern border should be secured. Besides the apprehension of aliens, the southern border should be secured because of the greater need to protect the nation from terrorists. Positive Moves by the Department of Homeland Security Notwithstanding the criticisms directed at the DHS, there are a lot of positive moves that the department has made in recent times concerning the protection of the southern borders. The first move is the implementation of a standardized secure identification known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) in 2009 for both land and sea travel and it requires that U.S., Mexican, and Canadian citizens present their secure travel documents such as passports for identity and citizenship verification before being allowed into the U.S. This practice is an improvement on earlier times during which people had to merely produce numerous documents or make oral declarations of their citizenship. Thus, the national query rate at the southern border currently stands over 97%, contrary to earlier times in which only about 5% of passengers crossing the southern borders were cross-checked against law enforcement databases (White et al., 2010). The other program that the DHS has used to improve security at the southern border is the Trusted Traveler Programs, which provides for the screening of people at ports of entry not only in the southern but also in the northern border with Canada. This screening empowers DHS to focus on individuals on whom little or no information is available in US law enforcement databases. International partnerships and agreements are the other strategies by which the DHS has increased the effectiveness of its border operations (Perl, 2004). For instance, by collaborating with countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, the DHS has shared crucial biometric information on millions of individuals, which is quite helpful for immigration purposes. Consequent to the sharing of biometric information, many cases of illegal immigration and immigration fraud have been detected and dangerous people travelling in fake documents have been arrested. On a similarly positive note, the DHS has increased its southern border patrols, which is currently at its highest in the history of border patrol. Specifically, the number of patrol personnel at the southern border currently stands at more than 20,000, compared to about 9,000 in 2001(White et al., 2010). Besides foot and car patrols, the aerial patrol coverage and port of entry security have also increased in recent times. About the ports of entry, the CBP currently uses the Recovery Act funds to modernize its land ports of entry (LPOE) so that operational and security standards are met. The DHS has also formed joint Port of Entry Committees for its big border ports of entry and for other international ports such as the 8 Canadian airports at which DHS/CBP conducts pre-clearance. Consequent to these strategies, the numbers of apprehensions and interdictions at the southern have increased in recent times. Finally, the increased effectiveness of the DHS on the southern border security could be attributed to its closer working relations with state and local law enforcement agencies (Wolf, 2007). Despite these positive strategies applied by the DHS, several recommendations are in order for improved service delivery. Recommendations First, the DHS should design and implement a strategy that focuses on change and evaluates the department’s achievements on the basis of its capacity to prioritize emergencies and border security risks. In fact, the principles/policies of the department need not focus on territorial control as has been the case. Instead of focusing on operational and territorial control, the DHS should lay a lot of emphasis on the assessment of the disaster and border risks (Wolf, 2007). Second, although employing personnel and latest technologies are crucial parts of border security and disaster mitigation, more effort and recourses should be directed towards the gathering of and acting on intelligence on border security and disaster preparedness (Pachico, 2012). As an alternative for evaluating performance on the number of immigrants detained at the southern border, the DHS should assess its achievement by the number of the criminal gangs that currently control illegal immigration dismantled and arrested. Rounding up would-be illegal immigrants and sparing the gangs that control the immigration only ensures that the gangs continue to have a supply of immigrants to pass through the border, making the cartels richer and more powerful. In the recent past, a lot of resources have been allocated for the apprehension of illegal immigrants in uninhabited and near-impossible to pass terrains across the southern borders (Pachico, 2012). Unfortunately, this strategy only made the criminal gangs and cartels richer as the legal entry points stood neglected. It is at the legal entry points such as the ports at the south that contrabands such as cocaine, marijuana, and weapons have continued to infiltrate into the U.S (Pachico, 2012). Thus, these legal entry points should not be ignored even as emphasis is laid on the near-impossible to cross terrains a long the borders. Conclusion The DHS was created by combining several security and response agencies after the 9/11 terror attack on the U.S. Its core duties are to protect U.S borders against illegal immigrants, weapons, and contrabands and to respond to emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina. In spite of the good work the department and its agencies have done at the southern border and in responding to emergencies, there is still room for improvement. Generally, the department is observed to be a bit more effective at the southern border compared to its preparedness to deal with natural disasters of huge magnitude such as Hurricane Katrina. Thus, it should focus more on improving the National Response Plan and training and equipping its personnel to deal with minor and major disasters. Similarly, the southern border operations of DHS should be redesigned and redefined to focus on the root causes of border infiltrations by illegal immigrants and goods, namely the criminal gangs that control the illegal trades and immigrations. References Bullock, J., Haddow, G., and Coppola, D. P. (2008). Introduction to homeland security, third edition: principles of all-hazards risk management (Butterworth-Heinemann homeland security), third edition. Butterworth-Heinemann. Chomsky, N. (2005). Imperial ambitions. Metropolitan Books. Pachico, E. (2012).”Three Recommendations for the New US-Mexico Border Strategy.” Insight. Retrieved on August 13, 2012 from http://www.insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/2617-3-recommendations-for-the-new-us-mexico-border-strategy Perl, R. (2004). The department of homeland security: background and challenges, terrorism—reducing vulnerabilities and improving responses. National Academies Press. White, R. A., Markowski, T., Collins, K., and CW Productions Ltd. (2010). The United States department of homeland security: an overview, second edition) (Pearson Criminal Justice). Pearson Learning Solutions. Wolf, N. (2007). The End of America. Chelsea Green Publishing. Read More