DHS head says migration, artificial intelligence, China and climate change are top priorities for the 20-year-old department.
US Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas has outlined a vision for the department and how it will address “evolved” threats as it enters its third decade of existence.
Migration, artificial intelligence, China, climate change and domestic extremism were among the biggest threats to the US in the coming years, Mayorkas said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks and spanned a range of areas, including “counter-terrorism,” immigration, and disaster relief.
It has regularly faced controversy, including the requirement of a “special registration” for Muslim men from certain countries in the early 2000s, and more recently, in 2020, the monitoring of Black Lives Matter protesters.
Still, Mayorkas sought to reflect a department that was changing “as the homeland security threat environment has evolved from a primarily focused counter-terrorism stance to a complex and diverse landscape of challenges.”
He was speaking a day after the department released its latest review of US homeland security, which it conducts every four years, a congressional requirement.
Here are some key takeaways:
Migration
- The model for U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is to “create legal avenues to allow individuals the opportunity to safely reach the United States, in an orderly manner, to utilize the humanitarian assistance our laws provide, and then follow up with those who do not use those lawful avenues,” Myorkas said.
- He seemed to be referring to the Biden administration’s recent policy that would allow the US to accept as many as 30,000 people a month from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela if they go through a specific immigration pathway, while deporting anyone illegally attempting to cross the border. stiches. Rights groups have said the policy violates US law by refusing people to seek asylum at the border.
- Mayorkas also said the Biden administration would make a “decision in the coming days” on whether it would revive a controversial practice of detaining families who illegally cross the border, a policy the administration has said it would entry was suspended.
- Mayorkas denied that the Biden administration’s approach “creates greater risk” for those who want to cross the border to take more dangerous routes, as rights groups claimed.
Artificial intelligence
- While countering threats in cyberspace remains one of the department’s key missions, Mayorkas focused heavily on the capabilities and threats of artificial intelligence.
- He also announced that he was leading the creation of the department’s first AI task force, which will “drive specific applications of AI to advance our critical homeland security missions.”
- Examples cited included using AI to improve supply chain integrity, screening cargo for products made through forced labor, and shipping fentanyl and chemicals used to make the drug all over the world. detect world.
- He said the department will ensure that their use of AI is “rigorously tested to avoid bias … and is clearly explained to the people we serve.”
China
- While Mayorkas identified four “unfavorable nation-states very focused on attacking” the US — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, he placed particular emphasis on Beijing, saying that the Chinese government “poses a particularly serious threat to the home country, which indeed it does”. affect all assignments of our department”.
- Those threats include China’s regional “aggressive presence,” as well as disruptive cyberattacks, and the possibility of Beijing’s “sponsored attacks designed to disrupt or reduce the delivery of national critical functions, sow discord and panic, and disrupt the mobilization of U.S. military capabilities.” to prevent”.
- Mayorkas said he led a “90-day department-wide sprint to assess how the threats from the People’s Republic of China will evolve and how best to guard against future manifestations of this threat.”
Domestic extremism, drug trafficking and climate change
- Mayorkas said that “lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a wide range of grievances and violent extremist ideologies, from white supremacy to anti-Semitism to anti-government attitudes, represent the most persistent and deadly terrorism-related threat in the United States.”
- The fentanyl trade has become a “plague”, with 46,802 overdose deaths in 2018; 57,834 dead in 2020; and 71,238 in 2021.
- The effects of climate change “have intensified,” resulting in longer wildfire seasons and more frequent hurricanes and tornadoes, while global displacement is increasing.
Response to Republican barbs
- Mayorkas also spoke on Friday about the heated questioning at a congressional hearing earlier this week, with several Republicans using their time solely to press charges against him.
- In one conversation, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green called Mayorkas a “liar” after accusing him of making no effort to crack down on fentanyl trafficking across the border. In a rare move, the committee’s Republican chairman ruled that Green’s comments violated house rules, barring her from speaking further at the hearing.
- On Friday, Mayorkas said of the comments: “I am fundamentally … insensitive to them, because I can make some mistakes … my decisions may be wrong, some may disagree, but I have 100 percent confidence in the integrity of my decision. .”