Sunday, March 5, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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For two decades, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has targeted migrant families and asylum-seekers, while ignoring the threat of domestic terrorism by far-right white nationalists. Now, it’s time for DHS to shift focus to the real danger facing our country — and abandon the outdated and inhumane policies that have caused so much harm.
For too long, DHS’s anti-terrorism mandate focused squarely on Muslim Americans, resulting in unlawful profiling and discrimination. Meanwhile, the number of domestic terror attacks by far-right white nationalists has been on the rise for years. There is broad consensus among federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies that the two most lethal domestic threats are: 1. racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race; and 2. anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militias.
Meanwhile, during the past 20 years, the number of migrants and asylum-seekers locked up in inhumane detention centers has ballooned. All of these centers provide inadequate medical and mental health care, and employ solitary confinement, a recognized form of torture. The federal government recently closed one of these centers after a doctor was discovered conducting unwanted sterilizations on detained women.
Beyond the detention centers, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) broad claims of authority have led to warrantless searches of people traveling on Greyhound buses and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detainers for numerous U.S. citizens.
We are paying more than ever before on DHS’s immigration enforcement work. In 2003, when DHS launched, the combined budgets for ICE and CBP were less than $10 billion. This fiscal year, the two agencies will cost more than $25 billion.
Meanwhile, the threat of white-supremacist domestic terrorism is real. DHS should prioritize preventing threatening attacks, rather than locking up and traumatizing families who are seeking asylum — a human right protected under U.S. and international law. We need to reduce and reprogram funding to ICE and CBP and reinvest that money in services that benefit communities and help prevent polarization, extremism and radicalization.
The current approach to immigration policy is based on fear and misinformation. Politicians and media outlets have perpetuated the myth that immigrants and asylum-seekers are threats to our safety and security when, in fact, most pose no danger at all. The structure of DHS — which places nearly all federal immigration functions in a security-focused agency created in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks — reinforces that notion.
Jan. 6, 2021, was a wake-up call. Yet many politicians and media outlets have instead focused on the so-called “crisis” at the border rather than those who carried out the deadly attack.
Worryingly, extremist groups have embraced ICE and CBP. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, founded by a white nationalist and eugenicist, supports programs deputizing local law enforcement as an extension of DHS’s deportation machine. A Political Research Associates report found over 100 sheriffs associated with extremist groups who have entered these so-called 287(g) programs.
The SPLC has exposed CBP agents working in tandem with extremist border paramilitary groups. These extremists are driven by racist conspiracy theories of an “invasion” at the southern border. Problematic rhetoric has also been reported within CBP’s own ranks. The situation is not under control. DHS has not produced an adequate response to inquiries about whether agents are terminated if they are found actively engaging known hate and extremist groups.
DHS has an important role to play in protecting our country from domestic terrorism, but it cannot do so effectively if it continues to focus on locking up migrant families and asylum-seekers.
DHS has to shift its focus. Twenty years of mistargeted priorities are enough.
Sarah M. Rich is a senior supervising attorney with the SPLC’s Immigrant Justice Project. Caleb Kieffer is a senior research analyst with the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. They wrote this for the Miami Herald.
