Name

Name

Institution

United States Department of Homeland Security

The United States Department of Homeland Security also called DHS is a cabinet docket

in the U.S. Federal government that is responsible for public security especially anti-terrorism.

The ministry can be compared to the Interior Ministry in other countries and was created just

eleven days after the 9/11 attacks. DHS was formed to respond to cybersecurity, disaster

prevention and management. DHS is the third largest ministry in the United States with its

policies coordinated by the White House, and while the Department of Defense is charged with

the military actions, the Department of Homeland Security is charged with monitoring the

Civilian Sphere, it has the mandate to protect the United States within the country by responding

to cases involving cybersecurity, border patrol, disaster prevention and management and anti-

terrorism. The ministry absorbed the Immigration and Naturalization Services ministries which

in turn led to the splitting of the ministry into two core functions; Citizen and Immigration

Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other arms of the DHS include border

Patrol and the United States Customs Services.

The main function of the DHS is, therefore, to detect, investigate and avert terrorism.

Generally, the function of Homeland Security is to make the United States of America safe. The

safety is ensured through the passing of laws, policies and fighting crime, and it also has

jurisdiction to manage natural disasters in the United States. The major areas that homeland

security deal with include Terrorism Advisory and TSA whose task is to keep the country safe.

After the attacks in the American soil, the first governor to be appointed to be the head of
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Homeland security was Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, and his first assignment was to

oversee and safeguard the country against terrorism and provide plans of future response to

attacks. With the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the DHS was made as a

standalone Cabinet department that unified 22 departments under an integrated cabinet.

Creating DHS would, therefore, provide the United States with a law enforcement

capability that would be useful in deterring, preventing and prepare the response to the future

9/11 events. Many agencies such as the Federal Management Agency (FEMA) were absorbed to

the DHS because it was responsible for managing the technological and natural disasters and had

successfully helped the federal government recover from the previous terrorism: the World Trade

Center bombings ad Murrah Federal Building Bombing were examples where FEMA was handy.

Other responses which were assigned to DHS are the likes of the 1980 nuclear attack that

became the primary role of the DHS and eventually led to the diminished roles of FEMA. The

problem of the diminished roles of FEMA became apparent when DHS could not handle

Hurricane Katrina which killed over 1,800 people in 2002. It has therefore been clear that despite

the focus on disaster preparedness, DHS has mainly focused on terrorism at the expense of other

sectors of disaster preparedness and response. Natural disasters have become too much to handle

for DHS, and it faced criticism amid recurring floods and hurricanes, which forced the Congress

to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act which forced DHS to focus on the

natural disasters too. The Act created leadership roles which redefined other components within

DHS, and the result was that the Homeland Security Act was amended in a way that directly

affected the way the organization functions and how the entities within the DHS coordinate. The

DHS should, therefore, continue expanding to not only fight terrorism, border patrol and

cybersecurity but also carry out other functions such as disaster preparedness and management.