Mr. President, we need a secretary of homeland security

By Jeh Charles Johnson

Oct. 24, 2019 at 12:51 p.m. PDT

Jeh Charles Johnson was secretary of homeland security from December 2013 to January 2017.

President Trump must appoint a Senate-confirmed secretary of homeland security, and soon. Particularly in the current threat environment, our nation cannot afford a continued string of temporary, acting secretaries promoted from within the ranks of DHS to, as some would have it, simply receive and transmit orders from the White House. The job is one of the most complex and critical in the U.S. government.

If I were still in that office, two current threats would keep me up at night: the recent release of Islamic State fighters from captivity in Syria and the possibility that some may seek to travel here; and the ongoing Russian campaign to influence our elections. Public sources indicate the Russians are undeterred; the presidential election season is underway and, in many states, the cybersecurity of our election infrastructure is still a work in progress. The secretary of homeland security is the Cabinet-level official of our government principally responsible for confronting both these threats.

But under this president, the public and the media see the Department of Homeland Security largely as the instrument for hammering the administration’s hard-line views on immigration; they associate DHS with the ill-conceived travel ban in 2017, the failed and inhumane policy of separating families in 2018, and the crisis of more than 100,000 apprehensions a month along the southern border in the spring of 2019.

Homeland security is, in fact, much more — counterterrorism, cybersecurity, aviation security, maritime security, port security, the physical protection of our national leaders and U.S. government buildings, the detection of chemical, biological and nuclear threats to the homeland and the response to natural disasters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeh-johnson-mr-president-we-need-a-secretary-of-homeland-security/2019/10/24/3d59d522-f676-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1