I’ve spent twenty years covering Washington’s bureaucratic evolution. Nothing quite compares to watching the Department of Homeland Security transform from its urgent post-9/11 inception to today’s sprawling apparatus that’s increasingly drawing bipartisan concern.
Last week, I sat across from Congressman James Harrington (R-Ohio) in his Capitol Hill office. “We created DHS to protect Americans, not to become a political football,” he said, tapping his desk for emphasis. “Twenty-three years later, we’ve got a department larger than the Pentagon in personnel that struggles with basic coordination.”
The numbers support his assessment. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s March 2025 report, DHS now employs over 258,000 personnel across 22 component agencies with an annual budget exceeding $98 billion. This represents a 34% increase in staffing and 52% budget growth since 2020.
The criticism extends beyond size. Former DHS Secretary Janet Reynolds told me during a policy forum at Georgetown University, “When emergencies happen, the bureaucratic layers often impede rather than enhance our response capabilities.” She cited last year’s Minneapolis cybersecurity breach, where jurisdictional disputes between CISA and FBI delayed critical intervention by nearly 48 hours.
The Minneapolis incident exposed fundamental weaknesses. Mayor Terrence Washington, still visibly frustrated during our interview, recounted how city services remained paralyzed while federal officials debated jurisdiction. “People couldn’t access emergency services while paperwork was being shuffled between agencies,” he said.
Civil liberties concerns have mounted in parallel with the department’s expansion. The Electronic Privacy Information Center documented over 1,400 complaints regarding surveillance overreach by DHS components in 2024 alone. Their executive director, Samira Patel, shared previously unreleased data showing ICE facial recognition programs captured information on approximately 1.2 million American citizens not targeted in any investigation.
“There’s minimal oversight for these capabilities,” Patel explained during our video call. “Congress hasn’t updated privacy guardrails despite technological leaps that would have been science fiction when DHS was founded.”
The department’s internal challenges are equally troubling. A career official who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation described a culture of “report-writing rather than problem-solving.” This source shared internal documentation showing that DHS components produced over 8,500 interagency reports last year, many redundant and few leading to operational improvements.
Democratic legislators have joined their Republican counterparts in questioning the department’s current structure. Senator Eliza Cortez (D-California) recently introduced legislation to reorganize DHS components. “We need to fundamentally rethink whether having TSA, Coast Guard, and cybersecurity under one umbrella makes sense,” she told me.
I’ve personally witnessed this bureaucratic entanglement while reporting on the southern border last month. Border Patrol agents expressed frustration at conflicting directives from FEMA, ICE, and CBP leadership during migrant surges. One agent, speaking off-record, described the chain of command as “a plate of spaghetti – impossible to follow and constantly changing.”
The Heritage Foundation, typically supportive of robust security measures, published a surprising analysis in February calling DHS “structurally unsustainable.” Their researcher Thomas Wilson explained, “The consolidation made sense after 9/11, but the threats have evolved while the department has calcified.”
Labor statistics reveal concerning internal dynamics. The Partnership for Public Service’s 2025 “Best Places to Work in Federal Government” ranked DHS last among large agencies for the eleventh consecutive year. Employee surveys show 68% of staff believe the department’s structure impedes their mission effectiveness.
The international perspective adds further context. During a recent security conference in Brussels, European counterterrorism coordinator Michel Laurent told attendees that coordinating with American security agencies often means “navigating a labyrinth of overlapping authorities.” Three European intelligence officials privately confirmed this assessment to me.
Professor Sanjay Gupta of Georgetown’s Security Studies Program has studied DHS since its inception. “We’ve created an organization too big to fail and too unwieldy to succeed,” he noted during our campus interview. His longitudinal research shows that information sharing between DHS components has actually decreased since 2018 despite technological improvements.
The financial implications are equally troubling. According to Government Accountability Office findings released last quarter, DHS has spent approximately $4.3 billion on abandoned or failed technology initiatives since 2020. The report highlighted “insufficient coordination” as the primary reason for these expensive failures.
I’ve reported on government restructuring efforts throughout my career, but DHS presents unique challenges. Unlike most bureaucratic reforms, homeland security touches fundamental questions of liberty and safety. Finding that balance requires more than organizational charts – it demands philosophical clarity about American values.
Both political parties now acknowledge reform is necessary. The question remains whether Washington can overcome its paralysis to implement meaningful changes. As one senior Senate staffer confided, “Everyone agrees DHS needs fixing, but nobody wants to take responsibility for what might go wrong during the transition.”
The American public deserves better than perpetual organizational dysfunction in an agency entrusted with their security. After two decades of expansion, perhaps it’s time to consider whether homeland security might be better served through focused, coordinated agencies rather than an unwieldy bureaucratic behemoth.
