Politico revealed on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security has been operating a virtually unnoticed program for gathering domestic intelligence for years, a program about which a sizeable portion of employees are afraid it may be unlawful.
Officials are allowed to conduct interviews with almost anyone in the country under the domestic-intelligence program, which is overseen by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) of the DHS. This includes people who are being held in immigration detention facilities, local jails, and federal prisons.
The program’s objective is to gather data on risks to the United States, such as transnational drug trafficking and organized crime.
Although DHS must inform those it wants to speak with that participation is optional and that it is conducting intelligence interviews, legal experts told Politico that the fact that DHS is allowed to speak with prisoners directly, without going via attorneys, presents civil liberties issues.
The program’s inner workings are described in the internal documents Politico reviewed, which also revealed widespread internal concerns about legally dubious tactics and political pressure and that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses. The program has been in place for years but was paused last year due to internal concerns.
According to the documents, many workers were reluctant to respond to a survey about working conditions out of concern that they might face retaliation for expressing unfavorable opinions.
I&A’s purpose makes it particularly vulnerable to political pressure, according to Spencer Reynolds, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a former DHS intelligence and counterterrorism attorney.
I&A has been forced to take an increasingly expansive view of its authority, putting officers in the position of surveilling Americans’ ideas and connections protected by the U.S. Constitution, he claimed.
“It is common practice for the office to portray political opponents as extremists and dangerous, whether they are left-wing demonstrators or QAnon truthers. Morale has suffered as a result of this because few people join the intelligence community to keep tabs on their countrymen’s political, religious, and social convictions. The supervision offices for I&A have also been neglected by the leadership, giving employees few options.”
The DHS under secretary for intelligence and analysis, Kenneth Wainstein, a former federal prosecutor who assumed control of I&A in June, said in a statement that his office is responding to employee concerns and that “the true measure of a government organization is its ability to persevere through challenging times, openly acknowledge and learn from those challenges, and move forward in service of the American people.”
I&A “has done just that over the past few years,” Wainstein continued in his statement, “and together, we will ensure that our work is completely free from politicization, that our workforce feels free to raise any views or concerns, and that we continue to deliver the high-quality, objective intelligence that is so important to our homeland security partners.”
