“We need to put homeland security back in the Department of Homeland Security,” said former DHS inspector general Clark Kent Ervin.
Part of the reason the department is still getting its “sea legs” seven years after its creation is that so much of what it does has nothing to do with homeland security and counterterrorism, Ervin said at a Cato Institute panel discussion.
Secretary Napolitano spent most of the first half of 2009 dealing with the H1N1 virus issues. She was compelled to do so under presidential directives signed during the Bush administration, he noted.
Nevertheless, Ervin questioned whether that should be the department’s role.
The potential flu crisis should have been handled by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control, he said.
“There’s absolutely no nexus to terrorism there,” he said.
Ervin was the department’s first inspector general, and came to Washington after serving as President George W. Bush’s assistant secretary of state when he was governor of Texas. But Ervin clashed with then DHS Secretary Tom Ridge and left the department in 2005. He emerged as a leading critic of the department, and published one book that analyzed the department’s shortcomings.
He is now the director of the homeland security program at the Aspen Institute, and last year served in the presidential transition team. Despite his connection to the current administration, he had plenty of advice for Napolitano.
The lack of focus on homeland security may be evident this year if the Obama administration takes up immigration reform, he warned.
“If they do [take up immigration reform], I would argue that the Department of Homeland Security should not be the point agency for that,” he said. Because department agencies enforce immigration laws, DHS should be involved and consulted in the discussions, but the secretary would be better off focusing her energies on security matters, Ervin said.
The security part of immigration is small, he said. It is largely an economic and socio-cultural issue.
“The point is DHS was conceived in the wake of a terror attack, and to prevent the next terror attack, so counterterrorism ought to be its focus,” he added.