Ten years ago today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began its operations, unifying 22 legacy agencies within a single department with a common mission: to safeguard America and integrate our Nation’s capabilities to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from threats and disasters of all kinds.
DHS has helped transform the way we secure our Nation over the last ten years, making our efforts more agile, proactive, and coordinated. Today, we are also smarter about how we assess risks, and how we mitigate them.
And a decade after the creation of a Cabinet-level agency bearing that name, homeland security has come to mean much more. It means the coordinated work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated and skilled professionals, and more than ever, of the American public: our businesses and families, communities and faith-based groups. We are safer and more secure than ever before, and DHS stands ready to confront our future challenges.
During March, we will recognize and celebrate the work of DHS employees from across the country and around the world through a number of initiatives. Earlier this week, I delivered the State of Homeland Security at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. It summarizes the past (DHS 1.0), the present (DHS 2.0) and the future of the Department (DHS 3.0).
I encourage you to learn more about the Department, and to stay tuned for additional updates as you share with us in the celebration of our ten year anniversary.
On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of men and women … the Coast Guardsman who rescues a sailor; the TSO who keeps a loaded gun off a plane; the cyber expert who prevents harm to our banking system; the FEMA worker who comforts a destitute family; the Border Patrol agent who spends days and weeks in 100 degree plus temperatures patrolling our border; the scientist who figures out a better way to protect a plane; we commemorate our beginnings; our maturation; and our future. This is not a day just to look back and pat ourselves on the back. It’s a day to re-commit and to move forward.