The Department of Homeland Security is one of the security branches of the United States. Within the branch, agents work to protect our country from external and also internal threats, ranging from illegal immigration and full blown terrorist attacks. Without the security they provide us it is clear our country would be flattened by constant terrorism, and our streets would be flooded with illegal drugs and people. I praise them for what they do for our country, but not for how they do it.

To learn about the DHS, first we have to know where they originated from. Here’s a hint, if you haven’t already guessed: they were founded after a major terrorist attack. It makes a lot of sense to me that an anti-terrorist organization was founded right after a major terrorist attack, even though they were a little late to the draw. The DHS’s sole mission in 2002, which was when they first started out, was to protect our country from things like terrorism, bio-terrorism, illegal immigration, and any other threat that our country is faced with. Unfortunately, their methods to deal with these things are pretty obscene. Most terrorism “suspects” are dealt with via racial profiling. Racial profiling is the act of people of a certain race or ethnicity because specifically targeted by linking them to precious incidents. In other words, it’s a huge problem. The worst part about it is that racial profiling rarely works. An incident I dug up was the assassination of William Mckinley, our president from 1897-1901. Interestingly enough, his death was to the fault of one of his officers, George Foster, who focused his attention on a Muslim man instead of Leon Czolgosz, the white person who killed them. When Foster tried to explain his actions, he stated, “His dark complexion made him generally suspicious…I didn’t like his appearance.” Not only is this disturbing, it is also ironic. The same man that Mr. Foster targeted because of his skin color ended up saving President McKinley from a 3rd bullet and extended his life for several more days. (Nakaya 75) Racial profiling has rarely worked and as time goes in it will get less and less effective than it already is. US Customs in airports have switched over to color blind machines to search people passing through, and those machines that couldn’t sense color performed 300 percent better at discovering illegal contraband or activities on passengers. (Nakaya 81) In reality, we just don’t know who the next group of terrorists is going to look like, and using these race based methods of finding evil-doers just won’t protect us sufficiently.

The Department of Homeland Security is infamous for another thing that they do to us citizens: infringe upon our civil liberties. Civil liberties are guaranteed rights we are given at birth, and I don’t appreciate the government taking those away from their own citizens in an unsuccessful attempt to catch criminals. Personally, if someone’s house gets broken into under the USA PATRIOT act and they are actually a terrorist, I don’t have a problem with that. The problem is, houses are being broken into, and property is being vandalized or broken when they are innocent. This brings me to my next topic, the PATRIOT ACT. The USA PATRIOT act, or United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Under this act, government officials can secretly search a person’s house. Now, the issue doesn’t arise from government officials searching the houses, it’s when they search it without actually finding a criminal. Thousands of people are victims of this, but the DHS justifies this with, “We are trying to catch terrorists and protect our country,” and I respect that. However, the way they “find” these terrorists is by destroying and robbing the homes of innocent people. In fact, the NSA recently stole thousands of emails and phone conversations from ordinary Americans in an attempt to learn terrorist info. This incident was protected by the USA PATRIOT act and was completely legal. Not only is that morally wrong, but it violates the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. In case you didn’t know, that means we as American citizens are losing the rights we are given at birth and violated as human beings, and I find that unacceptable. All in all, the Department of Homeland Security solves their cases by taking advantage of their own people, and it needs to be changed immediately.

If my security agencies did things without me knowing in detail, I would be a bit upset and even confused on why they would keep secrets from us. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the DHS has been doing. Recently, they purchased 450 million rounds of hollow point ammo, costing us a total of 540 million dollars. It doesn’t stop there though. According to the DHS themselves, they plan to keep purchasing that ammo until they have 1.6 billion rounds. To put that mass amount of ammo into perspective, we could wage war for years on end, and train our soldiers for decades. Also, the hollow point ammo they are mass buying cost twice as much as the standard full metal jacket ammo, and do double the damage. Why does the DHS need that much ammunition? More importantly, why does it need to do more damage? The Department of Homeland Security has not told us what they are doing with that ammo, and personally, I think I would want to know what my parents (wasted) tax dollars are being used for.

All in all, our own security agency has turned their backs on us by violating our civil liberties and inappropriately used our money to fund a project we don’t even know about. The DHS needs to stop this nonsense, and treat their country the right way, while still protecting us from the threats they seek to destroy.