DHS veterans worry over its future
Say direction unlikely to change after Noem firing
..... Javad Khazaeli recalls the day workers came to his federal building in 2003 and switched all the signs to the brand-new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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He was a young intelligence analyst, excited to be embedded with the special agents who did national security investigations under the newly minted department of Homeland Security. ICE was a smaller agency then, mostly doing terrorism investigations and arresting three or four people per week, he said.
..... Today, [03/05/2026] the agency he knew is hardly recognizable.
..... Before President Donald Trump removed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on March 5, [2026] she led a 13-month transformation of the department with White House backing, that's dented public support for the agency.
..... "It went form a national security agency to the president's personal Gestapo," said Khazaeli, who now practices immigration and civil rights law. Even with Noem out, he said, "I don't understand how this agency survives without a gutting of everyone who was hired and anyone who has been in a leadership position."
..... Calls for DHS to be overhauled or dismantled have been around almost as long as the department itself.
..... Created in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the consolidations of customs, immigration, airport security and emergency management functions under a single banner was seen as necessary to vet foreigners and protect the country form another deadly attack. Skeptics questioned whether the department's vast new powers could someday be turned inward, against the American people.
..... Khazaeli and other DHS veterans who helped coalesce the department in the wake of 9/11 says they are watching the department's shift to aggressive immigration enforcement with alarm - for the public trust, public safety and the future of the agency they helped build.
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"They have really converted the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Immigration, which i snot what it was set up to be," said Former Homeland Security Sectary Janet Napolitano, who led DHS from 2009 to 2013 under the Obama administration.
..... USA Today spoke with half a dozen DHS veterans who worked for or had a hand in building the department. They applauded the administration's achievements on border security, which include reducing illegal crossings. None advocated for ICE to be abolished or DHS dismantled, but they worry that the administration's singular focus on deportation millions of people could lead to the agency's downfall.
..... They cite fundamental shifts in the mission, policies and culture over the past year [2025] - fully endorsed and often led be the White House - that are unlikely to change under Trump's new nominee for DHS secretary U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma.
..... The DHS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Among the changes that concern the DHS veterans: officers masking in public; thousands of federal officers redirected to immigration enforcement; the rapid hiring or roughly 10,000 new ICE officers; the condensed ICE training academy; the sue of administrative, rather than judicial, warrants to enter homes, risking fourth amendment violations; and mandatory detention for tens of thousands of immigrants.
..... "The question is, what are the American people getting out of this?" Napolitano asked. "Are we safer and more secure?"
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"I would suggest that not only do we not feel safer or more secure,: she said, "we feel less safe and less secure."
..... The tactics immigration officers have used - chasing farmworkers through feels, tackling a business owner in his parking lot, detaining citizens - have contributed to a loss of support.
..... Tensions boiled over in Minneapolis, where federal officers shot and killed two U.S citizen, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Polls in the wake of the shootings showed more than 6 in 10 Americans believe the administration has "gone too far" in immigration enforcement, a reversal of election-year surveys that showed strong support for Trump's mass deportation agenda.
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The new DHS has "turned the focus from the true external threats, to seeing foreigners as threats and invades," said Patrick Comey, who served in ICE and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for more than three decades.
..... Deploying 3,000 federal offices to Minneapolis, a city with a police force of 600 officers, without warning or local collaboration was, from a law enforcement operations perspective, "terribly planned," Napolitiano said.
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"Interior enforcement is an important part of the immigration mission DHS has, but where I think the administration has gone off the rails is by not distinguishing amongst the immigrant population," Napolitiano said.
..... "A large percentage of the people being thrown in detention haven't committed any other crime," she said. "they have application pending, arguments for legal status."
..... Even the agency that grants immigration benefits lie green cards is now also conducting enforcement, hiring officers with guns and badges, the department announced in 2025. Adjudicators for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Seervices were rebranded "homeland defenders." The agency's hotline now encourages people who may have a pending immigration case to self-deport.
..... Khazaeli said though ump often underscores his commitment to national security, the moves within DHS suggest an intense focus on immigration enforcement at the expense of other priorities.
..... "The thing that bothers me the most in the abandonment of the national security mission," he said. "the reallocation of assets away form national security to the persecution of immigrates of all faiths and colors regardless of their threat.
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"We should get rid of violent criminals. The average American who isn't a White supremacist will say, 'We want the good people to stay, we want the bad people to go.' "
..... Comey said Noem's ouster isn't sufficient to turn DHS around.
..... "She was clearly following the mandate of the administration," he said.