"The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the United States federal government with responsibilities in public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve antiterrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cybersecurity, and disaster prevention and management.
It was created in response to the September 11 attacks. In fiscal year 2011 it was allocated a budget of $98.8 billion and spent, net, $66.4 billion.
With more than 240,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the Homeland Security Council. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy.
DHS data management could be administered by the NSA. Crime detection and law enforcement should be handled by the FBI and CIA. There are too many redundancies in the federal government. And DHS is just another of many.. If you like bloat, that's your prerogative, but the government should be run like a business.
You are certainly correct that there is too much redundancy in the Federal government. The solution is generally to consolidate functions in one place, not duplicate them in yet another layer of bureaucracy. That seems to be where DHS has gone wrong — it is another layer instead of replacing the redundancy. Eliminating DHS doesn’t solve the redundancy problem. Reforming DHS and all the reporting agencies would do that.