abolish ICE but also we should dismantle the Department of Homeland Security
I'm so serious. Aside from the atrocities of ICE, have you ever seen the org chart of DHS? It's a nightmare. Look at how many things the Secretary of Homeland Security directly manages on paper and tell me that's feasible. Kristi Noem wasn't getting DHS bills paid because she's incompetent but also that is admittedly a horrifically big office (still not an excuse but rah).
Why is FEMA in the same department as Counterterrorism. Also, why is the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the same department as counterterrorism and state+local law enforcement like I feel like there's a direct conflict there. We investigated ourselves and found ourselves innocent of civil rights violations (real). The Privacy Office shouldn't be in the same department as Intelligence and Analysis.
This is the third largest US federal agency after Defense and Veterans' Affairs. You know, the departments that concern the famously bloated US ARMED FORCES. The US slapped DHS together after 9/11 and just said yup, no need to revisit that, surely every decision of Congress in the post 9/11 trauma+lust for vengeance+racism era was carefully thought out and measured. also can we like. split the funding packages. like ifl theres a world where you fund certain offices and continue negotiating around the problem offices (ICE and to a lesser extent, CBP) but meh what do i know I'm not a lawmaker
Socialists ran Trump’s immigration enforcer out of a Mexican restaurant and she won’t be the last, they say. ‘This administration can’t be allowed to enjoy a nice night out.’
One night after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen conducted a press conference defending the forcible separation of immigrant children from their families, a member of Washington, D.C.’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter received a text from a friend.
“A member got a text saying ‘Kirstjen Nielsen is eating nachos like ten feet from me,’” Allison Hrabar, a spokesperson for the Metro DC DSA told The Daily Beast.
Less than 30 minutes later, about a dozen members of DSA were inside MXDC Cocina Mexicana, shouting at Nielsen while she tried to eat her Mexican dinner.
“How can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you’re deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people who come here seeking asylum in the United States?” a DSA member called to Nielsen in a video the group released of the confrontation. “We call on you to end family separation and abolish ICE.”
Nielsen continued to eat, surrounded by Secret Service. DSA members said she doesn’t deserve a peaceful dinner while presiding over family separations.
“While these children are not free, this administration can’t be allowed to enjoy a nice night out,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, a DSA member who attended the demonstration. “To me, the most powerful part was when we were able to use a speaker to play the audio of children being separated from their parents. What scared me the most was the lack of empathy or feeling that the secretary had. She just seemed cold.”
After video went viral Tuesday night, commenters blasted the demonstrators for disrupting dinner. But unfinished nachos are a small price to pay, DSA members said.
“Oppressed people have never been given their rights by asking politely,” Hrabar said. “Kirstjen Nielsen is not going to be convinced by us politely saying ‘could you maybe not separate children from their families? Could you maybe stop detaining and deporting migrants who have done nothing wrong?’”
“As someone who’s Jewish, I’ve been raised with this notion that this could happen again.” Rabinowitz said. “Never again means never again for anybody.”
He said a few dinner-goers disapproved of the demonstration. But other patrons got in on the chanting.
“If you ever wondered what you’d do in a civil rights movement, you’re doing it right now,” Hrabar said. “A lot of people started engaging. Some people started clapping with our chants. A couple people joined in, left their tables and stood up with us. On the way out, we got a lot of high fives from patrons and restaurant staff. I think the response in the restaurant was actually really heartening.”
The Department of Homeland Security downplayed the demonstration in a statement on Twitter.
“While having a work dinner tonight, the Secretary and her staff heard from a small group of protestors who share her concern with our current immigration laws that have created a crisis on our southern border,” spokesperson Tyler Houlton tweeted.
The impromptu action was the latest in a series of anti-ICE demonstrations by leftist organizations in recent weeks.
The Trump administration’s program of systematically separating migrant children from their parents is steadily expanding, government officials confirmed Tuesday. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions' “zero tolerance” doctrine, U.S. authorities have been ordered to criminally prosecute all individuals arrested for illegally crossing the border without exception, including asylum-seekers and parents arriving with small children.
The result has been historic, and catastrophic, with the U.S. government intentionally creating thousands of so-called unaccompanied minors whose immigration cases have now become separate from their parents, plunging them, on their own, into an already overwhelmed system of federal bureaucracies.
In a phone call with reporters, senior officials at the various agencies responsible for the crackdown said thousands of families have been impacted by the measures so far. They added that there is no uniform, border-wide guidance in place establishing rules for how immigration agents on the ground should handle cases involving sensitive populations, such as babies and small children. Instead, officials said, it is up to Border Patrol chiefs at individual stations to exercise “discretion” in determining how to handle such cases. Officials described the ongoing effort as a program aimed at “deterrence.”
Brian Hastings, acting chief of law enforcement operations for the Border Patrol, told reporters that from May 5, 2018, through June 9, 2018, a total of 2,235 families comprising 4,548 people were apprehended along the southern border. “The total number of children that were made UACs through this prosecution initiative,” he explained, was 2,342, and the total number of adults referred for prosecution during that time period was 2,206.
“All humanitarian considerations and policies remain in place. There’s discretion given to the field chiefs over each of the nine southwest border sectors for the appropriate referrals for sensitive cases, those include adults who are traveling with tender-age children,” Hastings said. “The chiefs in the field are allowed to make that discretionary call.” When asked if that meant there was no blanket, border-wide guidance on the separation of infants from their parents, Hastings replied, “That’s correct.” He added that “the chiefs in the field” have “generally” considered children under the age of 5 as being “tender aged.” Hastings could not provide statistics on the number of children under 5 who his agency has separated from their parents.
Steve Wagner, acting assistant secretary at Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, which oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is in turn responsible for the children the government is taking into custody, said his agency hopes the program will deter parents from entering the country without authorization. “We expect that the new policy will result in a deterrence effect,” he said. “We certainly hope that parents stop bringing their kids on this dangerous journey and entering the country illegally, so we are prepared to continue to expand capacity as needed. We hope that will not be necessary in the future.”
Wagner had no numbers to provide regarding families who have been reunited, post-prosecution, under the administration’s new program.
The case for abolishing the wasteful, incompetent, and abusive mega-agency has become especially urgent under Trump.
The Department of Homeland Security’s first problem is its name. Mainstream American political thought long celebrated the United States as a multicultural nation, one that forged a common civic identity among people from disparate cultures. Except for the Native Americans, this country is no one’s “homeland,” a word that evokes the blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism of the Old World.
“The word ‘homeland’ is a strange word,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mused to his staff in one of his infamous “snowflake” memos in February 2001. “‘Homeland’ Defense sounds more German than American. Also, it smacks of isolationism, which I am uncomfortable with.”
But after the September 11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration rallied around the phrase to describe its anti-terrorism efforts, reportedly pulling it from a 1998 defense report that called for an “increased emphasis on homeland defense.” The White House established an umbrella Office of Homeland Security under former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, then proposed the creation of a massive, Cabinet-level department by the same name to oversee the nation’s domestic security.
It’s now been more than 15 years since the U.S. government reorganized itself in response to a terrorist attack committed by 19 people. International terrorism’s threat to the United States has largely receded: Al-Qaeda is a remnant of its former self, and the Islamic State has been largely defeated in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the bloated Department of Homeland Security turned into a boondoggle—an opinion shared across the political spectrum for years.
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approached, in a paper for the libertarian Cato Institute, David Rittgers argued that the department’s unusually broad mandate is a recipe for waste and inefficiency. “This arrangement has not enhanced the government’s competence,” he wrote. “Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics.” Matt Mayer, a Homeland Security official under President George W. Bush, argued in 2015 that DHS has too much responsibility. “It goes without saying that I observed up-close the dysfunction, turf battles, and inherent limitations in an entity that does so much,” he wrote in Reason magazine. “These problems are exacerbated due to the fact that, in many cases, the activities DHS engages in require enormous coordination with entities embedded in other federal departments.”
Creating such a department wasn’t a priority for the Bush administration, even initially after 9/11. A Washington Post report on DHS’s early days noted that its most determined early proponent was Joe Lieberman, then a Democratic senator from Connecticut, who faced resistance from administration officials like Vice President Dick Cheney. But in June 2002, the Bush administration endorsed the calls for a cabinet-level department to handle homeland security, an announcement that came as Bush officials were facing tough questions on Capitol Hill about what clues they had missed about the imminent attacks.
DHS employees are just as reckless and improper as ever in Minneapolis.
Some of the media may have eased off covering the DHS employees gone wild in Minnesota story, but the carnage and unconstitutional and inexplicably bad behaviour has continued by CBP and ICE.
Minneapolis protesters arrested during one-month anniversary of Renee Good’s death Several demonstrators taken into custody Saturday after marking killing of Minnesota woman by immigration officer Associated Press Sat 7 Feb 2026 18.55 EST “One person, as they appear to be placed in handcuffs, says: ‘I was here delivering pizza for the protesters. I had no idea that this was happening. I moved to the side of the curb when they started rushing everyone and now they’re arresting me.’”
My letter to reps:
DHS employees are just as reckless and improper as ever in Minneapolis. I saw a report where a pizza delivery person on the job was arrested for simply being in the vicinity of a vigil to deliver pizza. They rip people from their cars for making hand gestures which sounds mad. It’s all unconstitutional and may I emphasize some more that it’s very unAmerican. This is what we always heard as a warning of totalitarianism. And now DHS employees are creating havoc and disarray on purpose across the nation, and I want to know what you’re going to do to stop this lawless agency?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
ICE Agents Allegedly Arrest Observers in Minnesota Who Point Finger Guns at Them - ICE agents allegedly detain Minnesota observers over 'finger gun' hand gestures By Catherine Armecin Martin Published 03 February 2026, 10:45 PM GMT International Business Times UK When questioned about the aggressive nature of the detention, the agent claimed the group had been 'threatening us yesterday with handguns'. The confusion intensified when the observer clarified whether the agent meant literal weapons. 'You mean like with hand symbols?' one observer asked. The ICE agent confirmed that the observers were being identified specifically because they were 'making assuming that we are going to do something' and they allegedly attempted to 'pull them out' trying to 'engage' with them. The observer asked again, 'Pulling out literal guns?' The federal agent clarified it was not handguns, saying, 'no', and said that was the reason the individuals inside the vehicles were being ID'd. According to netizens, the agents were referring to finger guns, which were not actual threats. This on-the-ground footage has raised serious questions regarding the threshold for federal intervention and the definition of a credible threat.
Department of Homeland Security was created in order to wage "the war on terror" in "the homeland" against "designated terrorists". That was its purpose. Many of us warned at the time about how anyone someone at the top wanted to target would be "designated terrorists", and voila, here we are.
