Posted on Monday, 05 May 2014
By thenewamerican staff
To an outside observer, it might appear that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has taken on too many missions. But a series of articles appearing recently in the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico suggests that the DHS has but a single mission: one called “everything.”
Created by an act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush in November 2002, just over one year after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the DHS merged 22 federal agencies into one vast department charged with the task of preventing terrorist attacks, reducing the nation’s vulnerability to terrorism, and assisting in the recovery from any terrorist acts that might occur and from any other disasters, natural or man-made. That might seem like a large enough task for any organization, even one that is currently the third largest department of the U.S. government. But DHS is also involved in many law enforcement and crime prevention efforts that appear far removed from combating terrorism and terrorist-related activities. In New Mexico, the Albuquerque paper reported, Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) officers have been working with local police and the state attorney general’s office on investigations regarding gang activity, missing and exploited children, pickpocket rings, and stolen and fraudulent Native American art.
“Native American culture is very important here in New Mexico, and we want to preserve that,” Kevin Abar, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, explained to the Journal. Preserving culture might seem a far cry from defending the nation from terrorist attacks, but an investigative unit that has, according to the DHS website, 10,000 employees and 6,700 special agents in more than 200 U.S. cities and 47 foreign countries, is obviously waging a war on terror that knows no bounds. Some agents will even call on strip club dancers for their country, the Journal reported: