I am a lover of language, of the power words have to transform one’s mood or even one’s entire outlook. The way I remember it, some 40 years later, I learned to read in one evening, with the little kindergarten reader I’d been sent home with and my immigrant, non-English-speaking mom helping me sound out every word. It felt like magic, a whole previously hidden world now all of a sudden opened up to me. I wanted to read every billboard, every cereal box, every magazine. And because most reading material in my home was in Spanish, by the end of the week I was reading in Spanish as well. Much later I went on to study literature and then law, spending an inordinate amount of time dissecting words and their meaning, their intent, their impact. All of this to say, I am a word nerd. Words matter to me, and they matter a lot.

Within days of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States had a new Office of Homeland Security. A year later it would formally become the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It made sense as a nation in mourning and in fear that we should create some kind of mechanism to keep us (or give the illusion of keeping us) safe from terrorism. The phrase “homeland security” itself conjures up images of scary outsiders looking for ways to destroy our way of life, does it not? In our collective trauma, we were all too eager to accept that terrorists existed somewhere out there, on the other side of our invisible borders and we desperately needed to believe that someone was looking out. 

Upon its creation, DHS was charged with overseeing a number of agencies such as the Secret Service and FEMA, but more importantly, it took over all aspects of immigration processes and enforcement. Today the department is responsible for Customs and Immigration Services (CIS), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And so, a department created specifically to address terrorism came to own immigration — and just like that, the terms terrorist and immigrant became, for many, inseparably linked.

It is within that context that DHS is able to hold itself out as some kind of hero organization. Their stated mission to “safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values,” with “honor and integrity,” to “prevent future attacks against the United States,” and to “ensure a safe, secure, and prosperous Homeland,” certainly sounds noble and beyond reproach. Unfortunately, even a not-so-deep dive into what DHS actually does with its $49 billion budget renders many of the words peppered into their mission statement (e.g., honor, integrity, security) utterly meaningless.

What honor is there, for example, in ICE officers threatening and torturing Cameroonian asylum seekers into signing voluntary deportation papers, waiving their rights to any further immigration proceedings, and quietly deporting them under cover of night? Where is the honor in secretly and illegally sterilizing detained immigrant women? Where is it in deliberating and planning the kidnapping of immigrant children with no intention or care for ever reuniting them with their parents? I always thought honor was founded on actions that merit respect, actions to be proud of. What, in these examples of what men and women do in the name of my country, am I supposed to feel proud of?

As for integrity, well, let’s have a quick look at the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which includes immigration court as well as the Board of Immigration Appeals. Though not directly controlled by DHS, EOIR is bound by many of the regulations and policies that come out of that Department. Merriam-Webster defines integrity as “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values.” If I had all the words in the English language to choose from to describe immigration court and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), a word implying any kind of moral code would be automatically disqualified. To begin with, immigration court is not a court in the traditional sense. For one, the immigration judge (IJ) and the government attorney work for the same team, namely the executive branch of the U.S government. It’s not uncommon, in fact, for the IJ to help DHS counsel find the right case law or legal theory to advance their argument in favor of deportation right there in open court and on the record. It’s also pretty common for IJs to grant additional time to DHS attorneys when they show up unprepared. I’ll let you guess what typically happens when immigrants or their advocates dare do the same.   

The BIA, for its part, seems to now exist merely as a rubber stamp to finalize deportation orders issued by IJs. Rare is the BIA decision that gives any evidence that the arguments laid out in an immigrant’s appeal brief had been read. Although, I should add that when faced with an IJ decision that grants the immigrant the relief they are seeking, the BIA will then bend over backwards to reverse that particular outcome. Ask me (offline) how I know. But what can we really expect from an agency that promotes a man who, as an immigration judge, threatened to sic a dog on a terrified two-year-old?

Honor and integrity clearly no longer mean what we thought. But what about security? Surely, at least DHS keeps us safe. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Their whole reason for being is to protect us from terrorists, remember? So how are they doing on that front? I guess that will depend on how we define terrorism. The dictionary definition of terrorism is “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” This broad definition makes no distinction as to where the terror comes from or who perpetuates the acts of terror. In fact, studies show that the greatest threat to the United States currently comes from white supremacists, homegrown racists, our very own. Yet we continue to frame the border crisis and our government’s response in terms of protecting our national security. That’s why a wall is so important and immigration detention so necessary; it’s to keep terrorists at bay. How does that make sense if the terrorist is calling from inside the house? Quite simply, it doesn’t. It’s a distraction. 

Once again, we’ve allowed them to co-opt a word and reconfigure its meaning. For DHS, a terrorist is brown; a terrorist is black; but a white guy is an insurgent, a protester, an otherwise loving father, husband, and friend whose economic anxiety drove him to desperation. This is evident in the fact that DHS rarely investigates cases of domestic terrorism and, as you may have noticed, was completely absent when it came time to protect the Capitol from an armed mob of mostly white folks less than two weeks ago. So much for protecting the homeland, my dudes.

Many immigrant rights advocates, myself included, have for many years been calling for the abolishment of ICE. Given its repeated and constant violations of basic human rights, and just basic human decency, this remains the immediate call to action — but I’m going further. I’m calling for an end to the Department of Homeland Security in its entirety. The name itself is meaningless. The values it claims to uphold are also meaningless when viewed alongside their actions. If we are to ever reclaim the honor and integrity we aspire to as a people, we must abolish DHS. As long as they are able to claim those words and those principles then I, for one, want nothing to do with them. Words matter to me. They matter a lot. So as long as DHS is around, I’ll be the opposite of whatever it claims to be, thanks.

Martha E. Menendez, Esq. is the Bernstein Senior Fellow at the UNLV Immigration Clinic.

Correction: This column was updated at 11:40 AM on 1/20/21 to correct that EOIR is not inside DHS.