Custom «Homeland Security» Essay Paper

Homeland Security is a law enforcement department in the U.S. which was founded during the wake of the notorious 11 September  2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. The department was formed as an element of the indomitable nationwide endeavor to defend the U.S. against any further terrorism attacks. Consequently, the Department has grown and apparently turned out to be the 3^rd biggest Federal division, conveying collectively 22 diverse Federal agencies, everyone having a responsibility in this endeavor of fighting against terrorism (AllGov).

The Department of Homeland Security primarily has a solid vision in place, which entails ensuring the motherland to be secure, safe and tough against terrorism together with other hazards. In order to realize this stipulated vision, the security department operates around three major conceptions, which altogether form a basis strategy applied by the national homeland security. These concepts include: the exchange of customs, resilience and security (“Homeland Security”). Consequently, these major concepts compel the extensive areas of action that the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) progression characterizes as the Homeland Security missions. The department’s missions are extensively enterprise oriented and are not restricted to the entire Department of Homeland Security. The whole set of missions and their coupled objectives as well as goals enlighten us in the lengths. This is executed in order to facilitate the exchange and customs, to ensure resilience, to build in security, to recover, to protect and prevent from any hazards or terror associated activities (AllGov).

•  

  0

  Preparing Orders

•  

  0

  Active Writers

•  

  0%

  Positive Feedback

•  

  0

  Support Agents

 

Title of your paper

Type of service

Type of assignment

Number of pages

-

+

Academic level

Timeframes

Spacing

Currency

USD

• Total price

Continue to order

 

In the country, there are people close to over hundreds of thousands of personnel which operate across the private sector, territorial governments, and a tribal, local, state as well as federal government and even in the further non-governmental organizations. These people are solely responsible for implementing collectively all the Homeland Security missions. Moreover, these are the populace, who on a regular basis, interrelate with the community being accountable for the public security and safety, operating and owning our nation’s vital services and infrastructures, developing the technology and performing the research, as well as carrying on watch, organizing for, and acting in response to emerging disasters and threats. These professionals in the Homeland Security department ought to have a comprehensible sagacity of what it takes to realize the overarching visualization expressed above (“Homeland Security”). 

The Department of Homeland Security has five missions in its docket; and these duties include enhancing the security and preventing terrorism, managing and securing our borders, administering and enforcing our migration laws, securing and safeguarding cyberspace, and also ensuring the resilience when it comes to disasters.

Enhancing Security and Preventing Terrorism

The highest priority and a founding principle underlying the formation of the Homeland Security department was to protect the American citizens against any terroristic threats. This mission engulfs three goals in line with the Homeland Security's counterterrorism tasks. These goals include reducing the susceptibility of vital infrastructure and major resources, indispensable leadership, and main proceedings to terrorist assaults and additional hazards. Furthermore, the department has an objective of preventing the unlawful acquirement, importation, movement, or utilization of nuclear, radiological, biological, and chemical materials, and also checking out the potentialities of these substances being deployed inside the United States. This objective leads to the collective aim of the Homeland Security Department, which is preventing from any probable terrorist attacks on the U.S. soil (“AllGov – Departments”).

Managing and Securing Our Borders

It is within the Homeland Security’s missions to secure the country’s sea, land and air borders and, moreover, to check the illegitimate activity whilst facilitating a legally recognized trade and travel. The Department's boundary management and security efforts put much spotlight on 3 interconnected targets namely: dismantling and disrupting intercontinental terrorist and criminal organizations; for instance, like the al Qaeda, streamlining and safeguarding the legitimate travel and trade, and out mostly to efficiently protect the U.S. sea, land and air entry points (Hawley, 2011).

Administering and Enforcing Our Migration Laws

The Department of Homeland Security has a great focus on the effective and smart implementation, and pertains the U.S. migration laws at the same time as facilitating and streamlining the officially authorized immigration course. This security department has basically reformed migration enforcement, putting into priority the recognition and exclusion of illegal aliens, which facade a menace to the public protection and mark employers that repeatedly and knowingly break the law (“Homeland Security”). 

Securing and Safeguarding Cyberspace

It is the mission of the Homeland Security through the guide from the federal government to secure the resident government workstation systems, and, in addition, to work with state and industry, territorial, tribal, and local governments as well as to protect the vital information and infrastructure systems. It is within this department to: reduce and examine cyber vulnerabilities and threats, to dispense threat warnings, and at the same time to organize the reaction to cyber occurrences with the aim of ensuring that our cyber systems, networks, and computers remain secure (“Homeland Security”). 

Building a Nation that Is Resilient

The Homeland Security Department provides a comprehensive and coordinated national response in the case of a natural disaster, a terror attack or a further extensive crisis while running with a private sector, local, state and federal partners to guarantee an effective and swift recovery effort. This department puts up a resilient and ready homeland during the efforts to: assist the recovery and rebuilding down the Gulf Coast, to provide training, plans and grants to the Homeland Security and to the entire law enforcement associates as well as to reinforce the information collaboration and sharing (“Homeland Security”). 

Measures to Be Taken by the U.S. Government to Uphold the Mission of Homeland Security

The department of Homeland Security forms a major backbone in the fight against terrorism which, according to its mission list, is awarded with the topmost priority. After the 9/11 terror attack which left close to 3000 families bereaving for their loved ones together with a massive loss of property prompted the U.S. government to take an extreme radical approach towards the war on terror. It came up with new legislations concerning the war on terror. This also saw the building up of the Homeland Security Department to closely monitor and ensure that the homeland is being safe (Hawley, 2011).

The Homeland Security is a government agency. It is prone to the manipulations by some bodies in the government, the misuse of its mandate in upholding the national security, and also the political interference. These challenges and interferences throw away the security department from achieving its laid down missions, thus, subsequently failing in its duties and responsibilities. Making sure that the national homeland security endeavor is operating along its exact mandate is amongst the uppermost complicated challenges facing the government. Actually, the troubles in defending the motherland are deeply rooted in the entrenched politics, persistent complacency and over centralization (“AllGov”).

Therefore, the government should put in place and enact several measures to sustain the collective missions of the Homeland Security Department. These measures if implemented should ensure that the right form of the Homeland Security has been established for the U.S., which would encompass the security department being efficacious and enduring. For instance, the U.S. government ought to establish an outline for giving the power to local authorities and the state in order to meet up their duties and responsibilities for the domestic counterterrorism and disaster response operations, principally for ensuring some local and state efforts into the countrywide policies and endorsing the intelligence guided policing.

The United States came up with the Constitution, which advocated for a federalist system of governance. The Constitution has given the expressed powers to the national government, but the partial powers and apparently kept back all outstanding powers for the people and states. Moreover, the federalist system was further affirmed by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. It has appended that all the rights have been enclosed in the Bill of Rights ought to not be interpreted as to disparage or deny other rights kept hold off by the populace and by making the additions on the corollary prerequisite that the authorities not assigned to the U.S. by the charter are held in reserve to the people or  states (Mayer, 2011).

Yet, with all the above stipulated legislations in the U.S. government or Washington failing to adhere to them, it continued to operate in de-facto where it seizes the majority control over the operations being undertaken by local and state governments. In case of the Homeland Security, the federal government has continued to sponsor exceedingly more and more the reaction to disasters by the department. This has raised the reliance of other governments to the federal administration and, thus, depressed the efforts to build more resilient and stronger communities (Chabrow, 2012).

This over centralization trend by Washington is exceedingly making the American people less secure. The intrinsic bureaucratic method of the central government’s resolution process, the diversity and geographic size of America and the nominal manpower that the national government really controls across the country are defectively appropriate to numerous responsibilities of the Homeland Security. This setback has as well taken the United States far away from its fundamental constitutional foundation, whereby the central government continues to take more authority further away from the local and state governments below the disguise of the newest emergency (Mayer, 2011).

Therefore, it is a high time the federal government relinquishes this power thirst or rather grabs. This measure should definitely direct the U.S. back to its path towards the constitutional foundation where the central government has some discrete and limited powers. On the other hand, the local and state governments apply the whole lot of powers, which would greatly pose a positive change to all American lives. This measure towards federalism will be problematic though it needs some extremely hard options by those responsible for decision making and the American community that is enthusiastic to impede looking up to Washington to resolve every predicament (Chabrow, 2012).

Another measure that the U.S. government should put in place is adopting a realistic, honest and fair approach towards the migration enforcement that identifies some local and state authorities as the dependable partners and renounces the amnesty first policy being basically an encouragement to more unlawful presence and border crossings. The functional and sensible border defense, migration and place of work laws are being fundamental to focusing on the scant resources on the imperative safety menace posed by international illicit cartels founded in Mexico (Mayer, 2011).

For the past few years, the central government has extensively failed in controlling getting into the country. A considerable fraction of approximately 10.8 million illegitimate migrants inside the U.S. arguably has entered the country with a legal visa. However, they have remained to reside after the expiration of their visas. The current administration which favors the granting amnesty strategy has exceedingly moved the country far away from putting into effect some migration laws (Hawley, 2011).

The effect of all these resolutions and the years of a severe letdown to impose the migration policy has descended mostly on the local and state governments. It has put up with the fiscal troubles of these illegitimate immigrants. Seemingly, Washington has always been blocking and discouraging the local and state governments not to enforce the migration laws even in spite of the legal case and to require some local and state migration efforts. Thus, it is necessary for the central government to cease considerably all the legal attacks hoist on the local and state governments when they undertake some measures to enforce migration laws. Also, the national government should fully offer its support to the local and state migration enforcement programs or rather initiatives which largely act as fundamental power multipliers for the implementation efforts (Mayer, 2011).

Moreover, the central government ought to set up a list of options of worksite impose tools to dampen the exercise of illegitimate labor. For instance, over 11 million reported unlawful immigrants, it is estimated that only 5 million actually entered the U.S. with the intention of working. As a result, the effectual migration enforcement has to comprise the methods for an employer authentication, intended at both the owners of illicit employment and unlawful workers (Moss & Smith).

The government needs to refurbish the method for declaring national disasters and also providing the Homeland Security endowments. The current programs and policies are widely known to desecrate resources and do not support the preparedness or resiliency. Furthermore, the local and state governments ought to operate their own adversity responses for the reason that they recognize their own business conditions, people and geography. These governments should also be weaned from the reliance on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) so as for them to affirm their conventional function in responding to every but mainly the most ruinous disasters. While the national response to calamities take up to 72 hours to respond, the local and state reaction potentialities are better placed to minimize the loss of property and life. Hence, for the local and state jurisdictions to be effective it is necessary not only to put up disaster reaction capacities, but also to employ them for the massive amount of disasters, small and large that transpires in the U.S. each year. This initiative will let the FEMA to spotlight its limited resources and time on building calamitous response capabilities (Mayer, 2011).

Other closely important measures which the government ought to put in place so as to ensure the full attainment of all Homeland Security missions include sustaining the use of major counterterrorism apparatus; for instance, like those approved in the USA PATRIOT Act and setting up a countrywide home intelligence and counterterrorism framework that unmistakably articulates how astuteness operations at every level ought to function so as to fight terrorism. In addition, the government should rethink the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and also to restructure its undertaking from presenting the airport safety to building some aviation security regulations and policy as well as transferring a screening duty to the airport rank under the custody of a central security administrator.

Lastly, the politics have rocked the Homeland Security Department for decades. It is really hard to entirely obliterate politicians and Washington from the department’s issues. However, it is to be anticipated that the voted leaders can toil to set away from the politics on when it comes to the matters of national security. Unfortunately, far too regularly, over the previous decade, the political affairs have played a huge part in strategy decisions. The politics has been criticized for wasting a lot of billions of dollars for the grants aimed at the Homeland Security. It has created some supervision inefficiencies, barred the advancement on the key issues and apparently left America less protected. The government should come up with the policies to keep away from politics in the operation of the Homeland Security. By so doing it would definitely achieve the laid down missions.

Things that the U.S. Government Should not Be Allowed to Do in Relation to Homeland Security

Actually, there are several things that the U.S. government ought not to undertake or rather be allowed to do them as they severe the overall operation of the Homeland security department, thus, hindering it from achieving its missions. For instance, the federal government should adhere to the Constitution on the issue of pertaining federalism, which clearly puts some demarcations on the authority between the central,  local and state governments. This federalist rule will not be  an outdated theory brought up by the founders of this great nation to conciliate the cynics of a strapping central government. They purposely premeditated to guard the country from over centralization of authority in Washington. The Constitution also identifies the actuality that local and state governments have the experience, the geographic locus and resources to superlative compact with the substantial terrorization in their respective communities.

Furthermore, the government should not be allowed to bring in the politics into the Department of Homeland Security. This department offers an extremely vital work to the citizens of America including delivering the security at all times and, therefore, putting in politics in its operation or rather politicizing its functions. For instance, like this happens in policy making that could directly or indirectly interfere with the effective running of the department. The U.S. parliament has widespread the reputations for enacting laws that propel some politically practical messages, however, may call for the unachievable outcome. Politics commonly falls short of producing the excellent policy results. Hence, at no time, should the government be allowed to politicize the work of Homeland Security (Moss & Smith).

The racial profiling has been frequent in the country, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is described as the phenomenon, whereby the law enforcement officers rely greatly on the person’s race, national origin, religious conviction, or yet ethnicity while doing the arrests or searches relatively than relying on her/his other information or conduct while spotting her/him as having been involved in dishonest activities. The government has gone further and detained about 700 persons, whereby it argued out that there were some suspects of terrorism. However, later it was revealed that the prime principle underlying these arrests was their religion and origin of which most of them were Arab as well as Muslim identities. This approach by the government clearly has numerous flaws since not all natives from the Middle East or Muslims are being terrorists, just a negligible percentage. Therefore, the U.S. government should not be allowed to mistreat foreigners on the ground of their race or national origin (Johnson, 2011).

Whether to Declare War on Evil Doers and Bringing Them to Justice

People who carry out some evil deeds, for instance, like the 9/11 terrorists’ attacks, pose a great threat to the development of the American nation as a whole unit in terms of the social, economic and political degradation.  Thus, such acts ought not to be tolerated. In that note, the war should be declared on all evil doers and put in mechanisms to bring them to justice. Blunt policies have made the Homeland Security Department operate partially; therefore, the new policies should be initiated, which would increase the authority of the department in terms of its operations and intelligence mechanisms. By so doing, many wrong doers would be detained and taken to the judicial department for sentencing.

Conclusion

The Homeland Security Department in the U.S. plays a fundamental role in preventing and curbing the crime within the motherland as well as globally. Its missions extensively and wholly cover some security matters. Therefore, their complete implementation is really required so as to ensure a secure and proper running of the country in terms of its people together with the government. As a result, any activity that can interfere with the effective running of the security department should be avoided at all cost as this can be detrimental to the citizens of America and the government, in the whole. Any government meddling and politics ought to be distanced from the Homeland Security. By so doing, the nation would remain secure.