Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson joins Juliette Kayyem on the Security Mom podcast to talk about his journey to public service, his undercover operation as a TSA agent, his thoughts on Trump's wall and GOP immigration policies, plus transparency for the DHS moving forward.
On Trump's Wall proposal: Well in fact, we have a wall. We have a wall over 700 of 1900 miles of our southwest border. IN places where it makes sense to have a wall. The Southwest border consists of urban area. It consists of the Rio Grande, which is very windy. It consists of desert and it consists of mountains so does it make sense to build a ten foot wall on top of a ten-thousand-foot mountain? No. If somebody is motivated enough to leave central America, travel the full length south to north to Mexico and climb a ten-thousand-foot mountain, they are not going to be deterred by a ten-foot wall. They'll either figure out a way to climb the 11 feet with a ladder or something else. So it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money to spend the hundreds of millions-- or billions to build a wall over the entire 1900 miles. What border security experts all say is technology, surveillance, boots on the ground in places where it makes sense in a risk-based approach to border security, which is what we already have. Our investments in all those things in the last 15 years has actually accomplished a lot. Apprehensions-- which are an indicator of total attempts to cross the border illegally have gone down dramatically 15-16 years ago. We still have a lot more work to do but it's a fraction of the problem that used to be. We have had challenges over the last two years, kids coming form Central America. Most Americans saw the image two summers ago. We dealt with that. Those numbers went down dramatically. Those numbers started to go back up again, and we did more enforcement, more border security. We know however that more push factors from central America, the poverty and violence are still there. And as long as they are still there, we're going to have a problem occasionally with kids, families surging to our southern border. So what we want to do is invest in Central America. Our Congress has agreed with that and we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars now in central America and we want to-- we want to give a lot of these families the opportunity to apply for refugee status so that there is a lawful alternative path to coming to the United States and elsewhere.
On GOP security proposals: Well it's more than noise. There have been some very specific most likely unlawful proposals made of an inflammatory nature that are in my judgment counter productive to our homeland security and national security interests. Given how the global terrorist threat has evolved to include the prospect of self radicalization within our homeland by people living here, it is all the more important-- it is vital that we build bridges to communities here in this country-- including American Muslim communities so that we can help them help us. And they can help them so that when they see within their community someone who is turning towards violence, who is self radicalizing either they do something about it to intervene or they call upon our homeland security or law enforcement personnel to intervene if we drive American Muslims away, if we vilify American Muslims that is counter to all these efforts. In my judgment, our-- what we refer to as CVE countering violent extremism-- efforts that I have enhanced and expanded upon since I've been secretary-- are as vital as any other homeland security mission that we have right now. Given how this terrorist threat has evolved. It is troublesome. It is troublesome that the San Bernardino attackers were people who self radicalized and who struck with no notice to our law enforcement community. And they and some of the other attacks we have seen (and attempted attacks-- Chattanooga for example-- Um highlight the importance of building bridges to Muslim communities so that we know what is happening in these communities. They want to help us! We want to help them! Since I've been secretary we've expanded on our CVE efforts to include grant making, to include engaging the tech sector to help these communities with their counter message to ISIL's message. And that's something we've gotta keep doing. To vilify Muslims, to encourage vilification of Muslims, to encourage suspicion of American Muslims is counter to those efforts it is counter to our homeland security to do that. I've been pretty vocal about that. I have not commented on almost all of what is said in this campaign season except when a leading candidate for president proposes that we bar Muslims from entry into this country. I think those of us who have a national security homeland security have to speak out. And that's what I did.
On transparency: I was fairly transparent about our legal architecture for our counter terrorism efforts, I made speeches here at Harvard, at Yale, Oxford, else where to be fairly transparent so there would be public support for what we're doing. The essential difference between DOD and DHS, as you've implied is that DOD is the military and DHS is largely but not exclusively a civilian agency. It's a very large civilian agency with 22 components. And we do everything from counter terrorism to secret service to responding to Natural Disasters and there are lots of components, lots of moving parts, lots of interest in what we do. Lot's of public interest in what we do. TSA itself is the agency of our government that comes most in contact with the American public. 2.2 million people a day come into contact with TSA. So there's lots of public interest and involvement in what we do. I approach this job pretty much like I approached my last job which is that as public servants we are in fact servants to the public and we should be transparent where we can in what we do. and we should go the extra effort to be transparent in our efforts. DHS is only 12-13 years old and we still have some growing to do in the sense that when I came in 26-27 months ago we were still too stove piped. The components submit their own budgets, have their own acquisition strategy and the like. Two years ago I started what we call our unity of effort initiative so that we're less stove piped, more strategic, more coordinated in the places where it counts. Acquisition strategy, budget decisions, task forces devoted to border security on our southern border. DOD was created in 1947 and it took almost 40 years before there was a Goldwater-Nichols law that created the combatant command structure-- the more unified approach towards warfighting. And toward national defense. I'd like to see us achieve that in DHS in a much shorter period of time. So our unity of effort initiative was started two years ago. We're still implementing it. Still a lot more to do, and there's a lot I hope to accomplish in the remaining ten months I'm secretary.
