If Ever There Was a Moment for DHS and ICE to Be Fully Operational, This Is It

Townhall 

At this very moment, America’s military might is being deployed to the Persian Gulf. “The Trump administration appears ready to launch an extended military assault on Iran,” the Washington Post reports, citing former and current U.S. officials. In President Trump’s own words, a strike against the Iranian regime may be imminent. “You’re going to be finding out over the next, maybe, 10 days … 10 to 15 days, pretty much, maximum.”

If we do go to war against Iran in the coming days or weeks, the regime in Tehran likely does not have the capability to launch a military counterstrike directed at the United States. American and Israeli strikes against Iran’s defense infrastructure and nuclear weapons sites last June significantly weakened their military capabilities.

But the fact that Iran probably lacks the ability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at Washington, D.C., or New York does not mean that it cannot inflict significant harm on the United States and the American people. For decades, Iran has financed Islamist terrorist groups that operate all across the globe.

One of the few things about which there is consensus among military and national security experts is that there are terrorist sleeper cells in the United States, poised to attack whenever the regime in Tehran gives them the green light. As President Trump has indicated, if a U.S. attack occurs, it will be aimed at the Iranian regime, an existential threat to the Islamic Republic that the leadership cannot ignore.

In other words, if there was ever a moment when the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) intelligence functions should be fully operational and prepared to thwart attacks against soft targets in the United States, this is it. If there was ever a moment when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be acting on that intelligence to track down terrorist sleeper cells inside the country, this is it. If ever there was a moment when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should be poised to respond to perhaps multiple simultaneous attacks, this is it.

Instead, the federal department that was created in the aftermath of the last catastrophic terrorist attack with the intent of averting the next one is partially shut down. At a time when alarm bells should be ringing, many of DHS’s vital functions are sidelined by the Democratic Party’s insistence that ICE should be required to get a federal judge to sign off on every arrest of an illegal alien and that there be safe zones where ICE is forbidden to operate, as a condition for approving funding for the department.

During the Biden administration, upwards of 10 million people crossed our borders illegally, the majority of whom were quickly released into the country after only a cursory background check, including people who hailed from countries known to sponsor and harbor terrorists. Between 2021 and 2024, Border Patrol arrested 1,504 Iranian nationals who crossed the border illegally and released 729 of them into the country.

Even more alarming, some 2 million people are known to have entered the country illegally but were never encountered by the Border Patrol or other law enforcement agencies. At a time when the Biden administration was routinely paroling millions of illegal aliens into the country, these 2 million “gotaways” likely had good reason to evade immigration enforcement agents.

The default assumption must be that at least some of those gotaways had identifiable associations with terrorist organizations. And, as we appear to be on the brink of an armed conflict with Iran, the default response must be that ICE and other DHS agencies should be fully funded and out in full force to find these people – and fast.

Given the stakes, there can be no excuse for not putting partisan squabbles aside and making sure that the department created to secure the homeland can actually do so, at a time when the threat has never been greater.