The Case for Abolishing the Department of Homeland Security

The videos of armed men in fatigues picking protesters off the streets and shoving them into unmarked vans are the stuff of nightmares. That’s how the federal government has responded to Black Lives Matter demonstrations that continue to advocate for racial justice and demand real solutions to community safety. Both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have deployed agents in an effort to protect federal property and crack down on crime, respectively. The Trump administration frames this as its response to violence borne of anti-police rhetoric. In the bigger picture, DHS and DOJ are institutions working to carry out the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, and their policing efforts are extensive across the United States, in the U.S. borderlands, and abroad. During this national conversation on policing and its abolition, we must push for the abolition of all the appendages of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, including DHS.

The War on Drugs began with President Nixon in the early 1970’s. One of his former aides later claimed it was launched in response to the Black Power and pacifist movements. It criminalized Black and brown people and was used to justify mass incarceration. This war was later taken beyond U.S. borders and became part of a decades-long story of U.S. intervention in the political affairs of various Latin American countries. This international crackdown on drugs was still underway when George W. Bush's administration launched the War on Terror in the aftermath of 9/11. This new front served as a pretext to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and expand the security state. Outwardly, the War on Terror has cast Muslims as the primary “terror threat,” but in reality it identifies anyone who opposes the U.S. government’s interests as a terror threat. For example, Black Lives Matters activists have been investigated by the FBI as “Black identity extremists,” while Trump has labeled antifascist protesters “terrorists.” Together, the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have given the government a blank check to maintain and expand a militarized U.S. presence not just around the world, but also along U.S. borders and within U.S. communities that are seen as threatening to the status quo. They are a central framework used to justify surveillance, intimidation, and the erosion of civil liberties.

DHS was first established after 9/11 and quickly grew to be an expansive and sophisticated security apparatus. Reports of tactical DHS agents in Portland, Oregon, clashing with Black Lives Matter protesters caused a national outcry: Some theorized the U.S. government was using Portland as a testing ground for how it would respond to BLM protests across the country; others were perturbed by the theatrics of it all, with the New York Times calling to “leave the soldiering to soldiers.” The reality is, the federal agent response in Portland is an extension of the kind of tactics they use at the border. What the ACLU has referred to as the “kidnapping” of BLM protesters is not so different from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers using coercive measures to pull immigrants from their homes late at night and detain them. After all, ICE is a sub-agency of DHS. In a show of grotesque force, we’ve seen DHS agents forcefully separate families at the border and place migrants in detention camps. These agencies traffic in fear and operate with near impunity. While scenes from Portland scared white America, they are nothing new for migrants, Black people, undocumented folks, and Muslims.

It’s worth taking a moment to distinguish between the distinct operations the government has deployed in recent weeks. The DHS agents dispatched to Portland, through “Operation Diligent Valor,” were specifically tasked with protecting U.S. government buildings during protests, as Politico reported. “Operation LeGend,” a multiagency initiative, has recently expanded to cities including Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit, which Attorney General Bill Barr said “are experiencing upticks in violent crime.” Both of these operations seem to be a response to protesters’ anti-police activism, as members of the administration have used recent riots and protests as the explanation for increased violence in cities. But there seems to be less alarm about the general crime-fighting focus of Operation LeGend. There are likely two reasons for this: one, the distinction between these operations is confusing; two, it is easier for many people to recognize the neat narrative of federal agents repressing protesters than it is to understand the systemic criminalization of Black and brown communities. It is systemic criminalization that the Black Lives Matter movement is asking us to oppose with calls to abolish the police and invest in life-affirming resources.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/why-abolish-dhs