On March 18, Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen delivered the 2019 State of Homeland Security Address. The New York Analysis of Policy and Government presents her key points:
Although the overall security of our homeland is strong—the threats we face are graver than at any time since 9/11. The ground beneath our feet has shifted. Our enemies and adversaries have evolved. And the arms of government are swinging too slowly to protect the American people.
We are more secure than ever against the dangers of the last decade. But we are less prepared than ever for those that will find us in the next.
That is why under this President…we have made a decision: to shape the world around us. To create an environment that is favorable to U.S. interests…to dramatically enhance the way we defend the homeland. In short, we are going from “highly reactive” to “highly resilient.” And we are not wasting any time.
In the past 12 months, there has been more change at DHS than almost any single year in its history.
New Wars, Many Battlegrounds
DHS was created to fight one primary, generation-defining struggle: the war on terror. But we now find ourselves defending against emerging threats on new battlegrounds.
Not only are we still facing the insidious threat from global jihadists, but we are under siege from transnational criminals…faceless cyber thugs and hackers…and resurgent nation-state rivals.
The battlespace is constantly in flux, flipping from the physical world…to the virtual world…and back again.
I am more worried about the ability of bad guys to hijack our networks than their ability to hijack our flights. And I am concerned about them holding our infrastructure hostage…stealing our money and secrets…exploiting children online…and even hacking our democracy.
These aren’t wars that we can fight in slow motion… If we don’t anticipate, adapt, and respond quickly, we will lose.
The idea that we can prevail with so-called “Whole of Government” efforts is now an outdated concept. It’s not enough. We need a “Whole of Society” approach to overcome today’s threats… Because it’s not just U.S. troops and government agents on the frontlines anymore. It’s U.S. companies. It’s our schools and gathering places. It’s ordinary Americans.
Threat actors are mercilessly targeting everyone’s devices and networks. They are compromising, co-opting, and controlling them. And they are weaponizing our own innovation against us.
America is not prepared for this. Your average private citizen or company is no match against a nation-state such as China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. It is not a fair fight. And until now our government has done far too little to back them up. President Trump has made homeland security his number-one priority.
Combat Terrorism and Homeland Threats
Our new DHS strategic plan integrates our mission across agencies and offices to reflect a unified approach.
The first goal is to Combat Terrorism and Homeland Threats.
Our Department was built in response to a complex, coordinated, and catastrophic terrorist plot. And we continue to do all we can to ensure we know who is traveling to the U.S. and to prevent nefarious actors from carrying out attacks on the homeland.
To thwart terrorist plotting, DHS has recently put in place some of the most sweeping security enhancements in a decade.
We have instituted tougher vetting and tighter screening in the travel system to prevent terrorists from infiltrating the United States, in addition to instituting the biggest aviation security enhancements in years. This includes sophisticated measures to detect concealed explosives and insider threats.
This year, our new National Vetting Center (NVC) will become fully operational. It will fuse law-enforcement data and intelligence from across the government to detect dangerous individuals seeking to reach our territory.
In the same vein…DHS has worked with the State Department to notify all countries in the world of more stringent information-sharing requirements to crack down on terrorist travel…But these major improvements are not enough. Fanatics have innovated. They have realized terror can be done on the cheap and spread virtually—using simple online instructions and household tools.
With the rise of ISIS, the phenomenon of “do-it-yourself” mass destruction was born. And homeland security hasn’t been the same ever since…Despite losing territory, the group’s reach remains global.
Just last week, the FBI arrested a Georgia woman tied to the United Cyber Caliphate—a hacking and propaganda wing of ISIS. The woman allegedly helped the group promote online “kill lists” featuring U.S. soldiers, government officials, and private citizens. One posting, which included the personal information of potential targets, offered a simple and chilling instruction: “Kill them wherever you find them.”
My Department assesses that the primary terrorist threat to the United States continues to be from Islamist militants and those they inspire, but we should not—and CANNOT—ignore the real and serious danger posed by domestic terrorists.
They are using the same do-it-yourself, mass-murder tactics- as we saw with the horrible assault last week in New Zealand against Muslim worshippers. Attacks on peaceful people in their places of worship are abhorrent…
There is no room in this great nation for violent groups who intimidate and coerce Americans because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or creed…
At DHS, we’ve launched new terrorism-prevention programs against ALL forms of violent hate. We are sharing more information with local authorities. We have worked with social media companies to crack down on terrorist propaganda online. And we have ramped up soft-target security nationwide, with a particular focus on protecting schools, large events, major gatherings, and places of worship…
DHS is also focused on amplifying efforts to combat emerging threats.
Last year, with the help of Congress, we stood up a new Office of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction—one of the biggest-ever reorganizations of DHS—to better protect Americans against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear dangers.
We also fought for—and won—legislative authority to detect and disrupt dangerous drones so they aren’t used in our homeland to spy, to steal, to smuggle, and to cause destruction.
Defend U.S. Borders and Sovereignty
At the same time, we cannot lose sight of our most basic obligations to the American people, reflected in the second goal of our strategic plan: to Defend U.S. Borders and Sovereignty.
I want to cut through the politics to tell you loud and clear: there is NO “manufactured” crisis at our Southern Border. There is a real-life humanitarian and security catastrophe.
Late last year, we were apprehending 50,000 – 60,000 migrants a month. Last month, we apprehended more than 75,000—the highest in over a decade. And today I can tell you that we are on track to interdict nearly 100,000 migrants this month.
The situation at our Southern Border has gone from a crisis…to a national emergency…to a near system-wide meltdown…the system is breaking. And our communities, our law enforcement personnel, and the migrants themselves are paying the price.
What’s different about the current flow is not just how many people are coming but who is arriving… Over 60 percent of the current flow is now families and unaccompanied children, and 60 percent is non-Mexican. Our system was not built to handle this type of flow.
Because of outdated laws, misguided court decisions, and a massive backlog of cases, we are usually forced to release these groups into the United States. And we have virtually no hope of removing them in the future, despite the fact that the vast majority who apply for asylum do not qualify for it.
Smugglers and traffickers have caught on, advertising a “free ticket” into America. As a result, the flow of families and children has become a flood. Cases of “fake families” are popping up everywhere. And children are being used as pawns. In fact, we have uncovered “child recycling rings,” truly, child re-victimization rings, a process by which innocent children are used multiple times to help aliens gain illegal entry. As a nation we cannot stand for this.
The humanitarian situation cannot be ignored. In one study, more than 30 percent of women reported being sexually assaulted along the way, and 70 percent of all migrants reported experiencing violence. We give pregnancy tests to girls as young as 10 to ensure we can offer appropriate medical support. Smugglers and traffickers are forcing people into inhuman conditions, demanding extraordinary sums of money, and putting lives in danger…children are arriving at the border sicker than ever before.
Criminals are using the situation to line their pockets, while gangs are exploiting the loopholes to bring in new recruits. And we are seeing the spread of violent crime and drugs—the majority of which come into our country via the Southern Border both at and between ports of entry. What’s worse, last year we identified tens of thousands of convicted and wanted criminals attempting to cross. And those are just the ones we know about.
So what are we doing about it?
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We have engaged the Northern Triangle countries to address the challenge at the source…and this month I expect to sign a historic, first-ever “regional compact” with these nations to counter human and drug smuggling, trafficking, and irregular migration …this is something I have been pursuing for years…
We have also stepped up efforts to protect women and children from being abused, kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and exploited on the journey…and to provide support to survivors…
We are doing more to dismantle transnational criminal organizations…we have intensified operations to seize illicit drugs—especially opioids.
I am also looking at ways to help at-risk migrants apply for U.S. asylum from within Central America—rather than embarking on the treacherous trek to our border. We must find ways to help vulnerable populations sooner in their journey north.
But it’s still not enough.
Our laws aren’t keeping up with the migrant flows, and until they are fixed, the situation will only get worse and more heartbreaking.
We need Congress to stop playing politics and do what’s right. We need Congress to change the law to allow us to keep families together throughout the immigration process…to ensure the safe and prompt return of unaccompanied children to their home countries…and to reverse the court ruling that directs dangerous criminals to be released into our communities.
Secure Cyberspace and Critical Infrastructure
On the top of my list of threats—the word CYBER is circled, highlighted, and underlined. The cyber domain is a target, a weapon, and a threat vector—all at the same time.
That is why another goal in our strategic plan is Secure Cyberspace and Critical Infrastructure.
Nation states, criminal syndicates, hacktivists, terrorists—they are all building capacity to infiltrate and undermine our networks. They are weaponizing the web.
For instance, in the past two years, we witnessed North Korea’s WannaCry ransomware spread to more than 150 countries, holding healthcare systems hostage and bringing factories to a halt.
And we saw Russia probing our energy grid, compromising thousands of routers around the world, and unleashing NotPetya malware, which wreaked havoc as one of the costliest cyber incidents in history.
I could go on for hours.
What worries me, though, is not what these threat actors have done, but what they have the capability to do. Stealing our most sensitive secrets…deceiving us about our own data… distracting us during a crisis…launching physical attacks on infrastructure with a few keystrokes…or planting false flags to embroil us in conflict with other nations.
The possibilities are limitless. But the time we have to prepare is not.
To get ahead of our adversaries, we released the first DHS Cybersecurity Strategy last May. This was Step One.
Step Two was partnership.
I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: In our hyper-connected world, if we prepare individually, we will fail collectively.
So DHS held a first-of-its-kind National Cybersecurity Summit in New York City. We brought together CEOs from some of the largest companies in America, hundreds of senior risk and security officers, multiple Cabinet officials, and Vice President Pence to take a clear-eyed look at America’s cybersecurity posture.
The gathering produced real results. Participants took action to deepen partnerships, break down barriers, and better integrate collective risk-management efforts.
We announced the formation of the National Risk Management Center (NRMC), a premier forum for government and industry to collaborate against evolving digital dangers.
And in the months that followed, we took an even bigger leap.
We consolidated and strengthened federal efforts to protect our nation’s digital networks. And with Congressional authorization, we established the landmark Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—CISA—at DHS.
CISA was long overdue—and will be at the “front of the fight” in cyberspace for years to come.
But strategies, partnerships, and organizational change will still only get us partway. So we have ramped up operations to keep intruders out of our networks.
First and foremost, we have driven a change in U.S. policy to replace complacency with consequences. We have made clear we will no longer accept malicious cyber interference.
We are fighting back in both “seen and unseen” ways, including publicly attributing cyber attacks to the perpetrators, levying sanctions, and delivering other consequences.
This has sent a powerful message to online adversaries, especially nation-states: America has had enough, and WE WILL NOT hesitate to punish you for compromising our networks.
We have also instituted a next generation risk management approach to identify and assess critical functions—not only specific assets and systems.
We are wielding DHS authorities to get dangerous software, such as Kaspersky-branded products, out of federal systems…and taking swift action to patch newly discovered vulnerabilities.
Alarmingly, our adversaries are using state-owned companies as a “forward-deployed” force to attack us from within our supply chain. So we are working with industry partners to identify and delete these bugs and defects from our systems.
But of all the digital threats, the ones we must take most seriously are those aimed at the very heart of our democracy.
In 2016, at the direction of Vladimir Putin, Russia launched a concerted effort to undermine our elections and our democratic process using cyber-enabled means.
Their meddling didn’t stop there. They have continued to interfere in our public affairs and have attempted to sow division online among Americans on hot-button issues.
Unfortunately, other nation-state rivals appear to be following suit and are—in various ways—working to virtually influence U.S. policy and discourse…
Last year we applied our “lessons learned” from 2016 to prevent hacking in the 2018 elections.
It was a full court press.
We worked to support all 50 states in a variety of ways, including technical assistance, security assessments, planning, exercises, sharing of threat data, and incident response.
On Election Day, more than 90 percent of American voters lived in an area covered by our network sensors—vastly more than in 2016.
And it worked.
Thanks to DHS cyber defenders and many partners nationwide—I can say with confidence that the 2018 election was the most secure in the modern era.
Responding to Disasters
But it’s not just bad guys we are focused on. Mother Nature has been extremely active, too.
We have delivered record-breaking levels of disaster assistance to Americans in the past two years, including putting $7 billion in the hands of disaster survivors—more than the previous decade. And in response to recent catastrophes, we are implementing a new vision focused on making America better prepared for the worst.
FEMA is investing substantial resources to build more resilient communities …we are forward-deploying federal personnel nationwide so they are working side-by-side with state and local officials well before disaster strikes…. and we are expanding alert systems so that we can warn citizens faster.
Photo: In March, ICE led the largest street gang take-down in New York City history, totaling more than 120 members and associates of two rival gangs operating in the Bronx. Official photo by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.