Replies

One has to remember that many of the entities within DHS are legacy agencies that were taken from other departments and placed in DHS. Coast Guard, Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, INS, and the Secret Service were all taken out of their respective departments and placed under the new bureaucracy and then they tossed in the newly created TSA.

Yup, and those pretty parochial interests don't really play well with each other, if the recent Federal employee survey is right. DHS ranks pretty much last or second to last across the board in terms of morale.

I also think that there's a lot of passive aggressiveness going on within the agency as well relative to the "expansive" approach taken (especially by the current administration). The public face of this is the lawsuit filed by those ICE agents against the President (actually Secretary Napolitano) over the illegal nature of the DACA program.

The not so public face is the background on the shooting of the LA ICE ASAC by a supervisor that used to be INS. Other issues are the general treatment of any small legacy agency group within a larger organization. CBP has a lot of Border Patrol management despite some major players having really sketchy ethics backgrounds. BP Sector staff demands knowledge of almost all activities within their sector, but doesn't have a reputation for being able to keep secrets.

It is going to be an ongoing challenge.