# Department of Homeland Security The **Department of Homeland Security (DHS)** is the youngest cabinet department (created in 2003 by consolidating 22 agencies after 9/11) and the third-largest by workforce. It is the immigration-and-borders apparatus, but far more besides: it houses [[ICE]], Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard. That sprawl — coercive immigration power, disaster response, election-infrastructure security, and a protective service — makes DHS the most operationally consequential department in the second-term agenda. DHS is the **enforcement engine of the immigration program** that sits at the center of the administration's identity. Where the [[Department of Justice]] supplies the legal and prosecutorial power, DHS supplies the boots: the arrests, detentions, removals, and border operations through [[ICE]] and CBP. This makes it the department where the gap between executive ambition and legal constraint is most visible — the venue for the mass-deportation drive, the detention buildout, and the recurring clashes with courts over due process and the scope of enforcement. ## Leadership transition (2025–2026) [[Kristi Noem]] served as the 8th Secretary of Homeland Security from 2025 to 2026, becoming the public face of the administration's aggressive immigration-enforcement posture. In March 2026 she moved to a new role as **Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas**, a U.S.-led regional security organization focused on organized crime, drug trafficking, and migration across the western hemisphere. The Senate confirmed **[[Markwayne Mullin]]** — the Oklahoma senator — as the 9th Secretary on a 54–45 vote, and he was sworn in on March 24, 2026, becoming the second person to lead DHS in this administration. Throughout, [[Stephen Miller]] has functioned as the policy architect of the immigration agenda from his White House perch, with DHS as the implementing department — a reminder that the department's direction is set substantially from the [[Executive Office of the President Hub]], not solely from the Secretary's office. ## The capture lens DHS in the [[Project 2025]] blueprint is targeted for restructuring around a maximalist enforcement mission. The patterns the KB tracks: - **Mass-deportation operations** — scaling [[ICE]] arrests and removals, detention capacity, and interior enforcement beyond prior norms. - **[[CISA]] and "censorship" framing** — recasting the cyber agency's election-security and disinformation work as illegitimate, and gutting those functions. - **[[FEMA]] contestation** — proposals to shrink, restructure, or push disaster response onto the states. - **Workforce and oversight** — sidelining inspectors-general and internal watchdogs that document enforcement abuses. ## Component agencies → **[[DHS Component Tree]]** — the ASCII structural map of the whole department: all eight operational components with current heads and sub-units, plus the headquarters and oversight tiers. Each now has its own page: [[CBP]] (the border and ports of entry), [[USCIS]] (immigration benefits and naturalization), [[TSA]] (transportation security), [[FEMA]] (disaster response), [[CISA]] (cyber and infrastructure security), the [[United States Secret Service]] (protective and financial-crime mission), and the [[United States Coast Guard]] (maritime security; an armed service that migrates to DoD in wartime). [[ICE]] has its own page. ## See Also - [[ICE]] - [[Kristi Noem]] - [[Markwayne Mullin]] - [[Stephen Miller]] - [[Project 2025]] - [[Executive Office of the President Hub]] - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Federal Agencies]]