If “Homeland Security” Is “Shut Down,” WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

Actually, no.

But to hear the bourgeois media tell it, it would be unthinkable for Congress to fail to vote funds for that monstrosity of a Federal government Department on time. They want us to feel as if ISIS terrorists will be pouring across U.S. borders and beheading us. 

There’s a big, staged Perils of Pauline political show going on- the U.S. House of Representatives passed a funding bill including language that bars Obama from cutting any “illegal” immigrants any slack. That bill can’t get past a presumptive Democratic filibuster in the now-Republican-controlled Senate. (The Senate has its own system of mathematics. There, in effect 60 is a majority of 100, not 51, because it takes 60 votes to “end debate,” i.e. end a filibuster. Ending “debate” is called “cloture.” [1]) And in any event, Obama would veto such a funding bill (supposedly). What’s going to happen? How will the U.S. survive without a Department of Homeland Security?? We’ll all be insecure!!

To which the non-hysterical and non-anxious might reply: how did the U.S. get by for over 200 years without that Department, which was created after the September 11, 2001 joint Al-Qaeda-Saudi Arabia-U.S. Deep State destruction of the World Trade Center Towers in lower Manhattan? (Pay no attention to that other building, the 47 story office building that collapsed straight down in a controlled demolition the same day a block away, at 5 in the afternoon. They didn’t manage to have a plane crash into that one to provide cover.)

The DHS is nothing but a grab-bag of existing agencies thrown together in a mishmash. And will ill effect on the performance of those agencies. For instance, the Secret Service, which provides bodyguards for the president of the U.S. and other officials as perhaps its primary duty, has careened from one scandal and example of ineptitude to another lately. It was torn out of the Treasury Department and stuffed into DHS. 

Another constituent of this stitched-together Frankenstein’s Monster of a Department is the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S.’ coastal navy. (The real U.S. Navy turns up its nose on such petty duties; thus the need for two navies.) The main “law enforcement” function of the Coast Guard is waging “war on drugs,” a venal and illegitimate enterprise that violates people’s right to ingest substances of their own choosing, and interdicting refugees trying to sneak into the U.S. by sea. Presumably, boatloads of ISIS terrorists are waiting to sail in the second the Coast Guard “shuts down” and declare the U.S. part of their “caliphate.”

Then there’s the “Transportation Security Agency,” those hated harassers at airports who delight in humiliating children and grandmothers, it would seem. They also have an important function detaining Muslims and dissidents (whose names some secret police agency put on a shit list) at the U.S. border for interrogation, rough treatment, and seizing cellphones, computers, address books, and etc. to “gather intelligence.” 

But what about the FBI? The CIA? The NSA? The actual Federal agencies that supposedly track and hunt down “terrorists”?

They’re not part of the DHS. 

And “shut down” is a bit of an exaggeration.(Quite a large exaggeration, as you’ll discover farther on in this essay.) I’d be pleasantly surprised if DHS stopped its malevolent operations for one second.

The truth is, there’s nothing stopping Obama from telling Treasury to keep funding DHS’ account- except a scrap of parchment called the U.S. Constitution. But it’s not as if presidents never do illegal things.

The new Senate boss, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, split the part of the DHS funding bill that ties Obama’s hands on selective (un)enforcement of punitive U.S. anti-immigrant law from the authorization of money for the Department, creating two bills that can be voted on separately. Assuming the Senate passes the funding bill sans the bar on Obama’s executive action,that kicks the ball back to the House. There, the fanatical GOP Representatives will have to decide whether to dig in their heels or to blink.

Yawn.

Guess what? A “shutdown” means that only 15% of DHS employees are temporarily furloughed. The rest would keep working and have to wait for their paychecks. [2] And part of DHS, “Citizenship and Immigration Services,” isn’t affected at all because it is entirely funded by the exorbitant “administrative fees” gouged out of immigrants applying for green cards, visas, citizenship and whatever else those caught up in its rigamarole have to fork over money for. (For example, the “application fee” to apply for citizenship is $685- including $85 to take your fingerprints- an increase of $595 since 1997. That’s per person, not family.)

Recall that the GOP “shut down” the entire government a few years back. But “essential” personnel and functions kept on working regarding. “Essential” mainly means the repressive functions of the government.

But those who get their “news” from TV or radio aren’t told that DHS isn’t REALLY going to “shut down.” Broadcasting 24 hours every day of the year, is there really “no time” to mention that? Yet another example of how U.S. “news” is more akin to propaganda, “messaging” designed to manipulate people’s minds.

1] And actually, a filibuster isn’t really a filibuster anymore, not as what it used to be until recently. It used to require, for most of U.S. history, some Senators to actually be on the Senate floor bloviating (“debating”) to stall a vote on a bill. Now filibusters are notional- a Senator advises that he’s “filibustering” and the party leaders exchange notes on how many Senators would vote for or against cloture, that is “ending [the non-existent] debate”. It’s a political minuet conducted by the leaders of the two ruling parties in the Senate.

As for what Obama wants to do by executive fiat, he would stop deporting for the time being about 5 million of the 11 million “illegal” immigrants estimated to be in the U.S., namely parents whose children are U.S. citizens because they were born in the U.S.), and people brought here as children, PROVIDED they’ve been here at least five years AND pay taxes AND don’t have any arrest or conviction records. I should mention, since it rarely is mentioned by the corporate propaganda system, that Obama has deported more people than any U.S. president, ever- over 2 million people. 

He is also cruelly imprisoning and deporting as fast as he can Central American minors who fled hyperviolence at home in three nations turned into hellholes by U.S. foreign policy: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. (Of course he did his usual thing of spewing mendacious rhetoric about how he was going to provide compassionate refuge for these kids, etc.)

Obama has shown how, let us say, “flexible” he is. For years he claimed his hands were tied on deportations by law, that it would be illegal for him to act by executive order. Now he’s done just that. 

Why are there still people willing to believe anything he says?

2] Only 15% of DHS employees would actually stop work; source: “Concerns Mount as Homeland Security Shutdown Looks Likely,” New York Times, February 23, 2015.