Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas delivered the following remarks in his keynote address to the inaugural Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence in New York City, NY.
Good morning.
In May 2021, a high school senior from Conklin, New York, just 150 miles from here, was asked by his economics teacher to share his post-graduation plans. The boy responded, “I want to murder and commit suicide.” Understandably alarmed, the teacher quickly referred the boy to local police and a state psychiatric hospital for investigation and evaluation, but he was soon released after insisting his statement was a joke. The months ahead, however, brought further disturbing behavior: The boy killed a cat with a hatchet and disposed of it with the help of his mother. He wore a full hazmat suit to school one day. Finally, he underwent a background check and purchased a semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun, extended ammunition magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammo, and body armor.
Federal, state, and local authorities, the boy's parents, his teachers, and his classmates were all individually aware of at least some of these warning signs. But over the course of 11 months, the dots were not connected, disruptive action was not taken, and on May 14, 2022, the boy – Payton Gendron – used the weaponry he had purchased to murder 10 African Americans and injure three others in a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York. It was the deadliest attack by a terrorist against Black Americans in over 100 years.
In the 23 years since September 11, 2001, and in the 21 years since the Department of Homeland Security’s founding in the wake of that tragic day, the scope of the terrorism threat facing our country has evolved and expanded dramatically.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the most prominent terrorism-related threat facing our nation was that of sophisticated, foreign terrorist networks, who aimed to attack highly valuable and highly visible targets in major metropolitan areas. The threat posed by foreign terrorism certainly persists, of course, and our Department remains vigilant against it – just this past summer, DHS and our federal partners worked together to arrest eight Tajik nationals in our country believed to have connections to ISIS. In fact, that threat is increasing in our post-October 7th world.
But today, another prominent and challenging terrorism-related threat facing the United States is that of lone offenders like the Buffalo shooter and small groups of individuals already present here in America.
These are individuals who have been radicalized to violence, based on ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, conspiracy theories, or personal grievances. These are offenders who do not necessarily need a hijacked 757 or a dirty bomb to fracture our nation’s sense of safety and security; they can do incalculable damage using a vehicle, a firearm, or a piece of software. These are terrorists less concerned with highly valuable or highly visible targets, like the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, than they are with highly convenient targets, like schools and campuses, houses of worship, grocery stores, hospitals, polling places, election workers, and law enforcement officers.
In our modern, heightened terrorism threat environment, any locality, anywhere, can be a target at any time, making the already-demanding work of counterterrorism and targeted violence-prevention even more difficult for the institutions who must cope with it.
The Department of Homeland Security’s founding mandate – to safeguard the American people and our homeland – remains unchanged, and our capabilities and programs have necessarily evolved and expanded to meet this modern threat environment. But mitigating these increasingly pervasive terrorist threats is not something that the Department of Homeland Security, or the federal government, or any law enforcement agency or office, can do alone. Partnerships across the homeland security and counterterrorism enterprises – partnerships that compound our individual lines of effort in line with the compounding threat landscape – are the key to keeping our community safe and secure.
Partnerships are how we break down the information siloes and fill the communication gaps that terrorists thrive in: One of the key findings of the 9/11 Commission Report was that such gaps between our nation’s intelligence agencies and criminal investigators enabled al-Qaeda hijackers to travel to the United States, learn how to fly Boeing jets, board planes that fateful morning, and wreak such horrible devastation on our country. DHS was created to help bridge that divide, and now, we are taking deliberate steps, through our Office of Intelligence and Analysis, to further strengthen and expand our information-sharing efforts. We have reinvigorated our Nationwide Suspicious Activity Report Initiative and Homeland Security Information Network; revamped DHS Intel, an app that delivers intelligence to law enforcement and first responders in real time; and we have increased our coordination with our National Network of Fusion Centers.
We are ensuring that the threat intelligence we collectively gather – be it on the federal level or by a phone call to the local sheriff from a concerned citizen – is shared at the lowest classification level possible to the broadest audience possible, and ultimately makes its way into the hands of the operators in the field who need it.
Partnerships are also how we cut through red tape and ensure communities across the country are more quickly able to access the means of support they need to stop acts of terrorism and targeted violence.
As we speak, for example, our Department’s Office of Partnership and Engagement is hosting the third in a series of regional workshops designed to bring together federal officials, state and local leaders, community stakeholders, and private citizens to help them access life-saving DHS tools and resources. Our tools include best practice guides and services from our Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA; tabletop exercises available to help better ensure the safety, security, and protection of polling places and election workers; technical and educational assistance available under President Biden’s first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism and the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism; and funds available through our Department’s grantmaking programs. Our Nonprofit Security Grants have provided over $1 billion in federal assistance to help nonprofit organizations prevent, prepare for, protect against, and respond to attacks, and our Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grants have helped more than 100 different violence-reduction pilot programs get off the ground and flourish.
Through these modernized means of support, and through the expanded lines of communication our Department has opened with state and local counterterrorism stakeholders via our Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Office for State and Local Law Enforcement, and our operational component agencies, we are increasing our country’s counterterrorism capacity, enabling us to better support the work of agencies and localities where, 23 years ago, we had very little footprint.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, partnerships are also essential to effective, proactive prevention work – to decreasing the likelihood of violence before it manifests.
As the investigation into the shooting at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo made devastatingly clear, the person best situated to recognize when someone is growing alarmingly despondent or aggressive, or fixating on previous violent attacks, or expressing intent to do harm in the future, or exhibiting any number of other warning signs, is not necessarily a law enforcement officer or a criminal investigator. It is often a loved one, a caring teacher, a classmate, a neighbor.
When these citizens are empowered to recognize behavioral indicators associated with violence, and to make appropriate referrals to proper authorities – not just law enforcement departments, but also mental health professionals, social workers, school counselors, and faith leaders – and when those authorities work together to intervene and get someone in crisis the help they need – we are together able to prevent untold violent harms.
Our Department’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3, and its national network of Regional Prevention Coordinators are helping communities across the country do just that, by working with state and local leaders to stand up multidisciplinary Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management teams, where law enforcement officers partner with non-law enforcement prevention professionals to conduct non-criminal justice interventions where possible, and to ensure public safety when necessary.
That includes right here in New York. Following the attack in Buffalo, our Department and CP3 worked with the State to stand up nearly 40 such teams across the state of New York, resolved to help prevent another act of targeted violence. This collaboration has brokered significant results: last year alone, the work of these teams led to 1,200 violence interventions and hundreds of referrals to local law enforcement. We may not always know the tragedy we prevent, but I can tell you that at least two of these referrals led to the discovery of drafted manifestos and stockpiled weapons.
These lines of effort, and the demonstrable, life-saving outcomes they have delivered, meet the mandate our country set for itself 23 years ago: Never Again. Never again would we grow complacent when the outcome can be needless death and devastation; never again would we take our safety and security for granted; never again would we find ourselves unprepared and vulnerable.
We have not always lived up to that ideal. The challenges we across the homeland security enterprise face are more immense today than ever before, and they will continue to evolve and grow in the years ahead. But our mission remains sacred, and vital to the people we serve.
Convenings like this inaugural Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence; the continued advocacy of extraordinary, experienced, and patriotic leaders like Ali Soufan; and the conversations, connections, and collaborations fostered here are critical to fulfilling it.
Thank you all for being here today. Your vigilance, your enduring partnership, and your continued dedication to building a more secure future and defeating the forces of fear honors every victim of terrorism.
Thank you for the privilege of speaking with you this morning, and thank you for all that you do, every day, to keep our country safe.
Thank you.