Nick Miroff’s latest piece in The Atlantic, undersells how misguided and dangerous the creation of DHS was. The piece quotes former DHS executives at length while generalizing and summarizing criticisms and critics. Its focus on social media and the recent aftermath of Renee Good’s murder by an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross skips plenty of evidence of how DHS components beyond ICE have been abusing their power.

Nearly 6 years ago, during protests after George Floyd was publicly murdered by Minneapolis police officers, masked and camouflaged federal officers in unmarked minivans kidnapped numerous people off the streets of Portland, Oregon. Nothing about protecting federal property requires this. No one was ever held accountable for this lawless behavior. Now it’s happening again—and worse.

Also unmentioned in Miroff’s piece, the growing number of detainees dying while in ICE custody. Nearly 6 years ago, the detainee death toll hit its highest level since its inception. ICE surpassed that already grim figure again last year. An investigation led by Senator Jon Ossoff found hundreds of credible allegations of sexual assault, miscarriages, and child neglect in ICE detention centers around the country.

Despite these and other reports, only one of the DHS execs interviews goes so far as to say its creation may have been a mistake. Former DHS secretary Jeh Johnson’s quote is arguably worse, effectively comparing calls to abolish ICE to trying to get rid of the Defense Department because of Vietnam. But there is no baby in this bathtub of an agency—only bathwater that all needs to go.

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist attack which had killed the most people on U.S. soil was the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people died that day—including children in a daycare on-site—because a white supremacist trained by the U.S. military and his accomplice decided to take revenge against the federal government for their actions in Waco and at Ruby Ridge. Over 600 people were injured. Some of the same Republicans who opposed expanding FBI powers to improve their counterterrorism capabilities to monitor these domestic paramilitary groups gleefully handed over even more power to the Frankenstein monster of DHS. The GOP responded to this report on rightwing extremism in the United States by destroying the civil service careers of the people who wrote it. This is why local law enforcement in Charlottesville had no federal support to turn to for intelligence and advance warnings regarding participants in the Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Over the past year, we have watched ICE and CBP act as agents of state terror, under the pretext of immigration enforcement. They have used extraordinary rendition to send innocent people to countries they have no connection to, where they have been abused and tortured—just like terrorism suspects during the so-called global war on terrorism. There are legitimate questions—including from my congressional representative—regarding whether or not ICE is employing pardoned Jan 6th insurrectionists. Two days ago, DHS director Kristi Noem said ICE may ask Americans for proof of citizenship during enforcement operations.

I’m 52 years old and I only ever expected to read about “papers please” societies in history books about how this country used to treat black folks, not live in such a society. I’ve held a top secret clearance, including doing type of work sufficiently restricted that I was only eligible to do because I’m a natural-born citizen of the United States. My last federal contract was with USCIS during the transition from the Obama administration to the first Trump administration. I had coworkers directly impacted by the Muslim ban. I lack the words to fully articulate my rage at the Supreme Court and this country putting an insurrectionist back in office and enabling him to use DHS to enact a white supremacist agenda of ethnic cleansing. Nothing about DHS is salvageable if it can be so easily used for this purpose. We ought not pretend it can be. We should be skeptical of anyone and everyone who suggests it can.