Rep. Sara Jacobs Reiterates Call to Break Up DHS
After voting against H. Res. 1128, Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA-51) reiterated her call to break up and restructure the Department of Homeland Security.
Rep. Sara Jacobs said: “After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was created to fix major security failures – but instead helped build a permanent domestic surveillance state. With a broad mandate and limited oversight, DHS has enabled mass data collection on Americans: buying our data from brokers, scanning our fingerprints and faces at airports, monitoring our social media, tracking license plates, and expanding border operations deeper into the interior. It then shares often racially-biased and poorly vetted information, frequently gathered without a warrant, with federal, state, and local governments and the private sector, where it can easily be weaponized. Despite little evidence that this has made us safer, DHS has continued to push the envelope of its mandate and its authorities to monitor, surveil, and collect information about Americans. And unfortunately, the Republican Party, better known as the Party of the PATRIOT Act, has further emboldened this rogue agency and given it a blank check to violate the rights and civil liberties of the American people. That needs to end, and the Department of Homeland Security should be broken up and fundamentally restructured.”
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