Final Installment: Project 2025’s Plans for DHS, DOD and the Intelligence Community
Previous posts describe the apocalyptic vision of America in the forward to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, the report’s plan to establish strong presidential control over federal agencies and the National Security Council and to politicize the federal civil service, and its plan to undermine the Department of Justice (DOJ). This post assesses its plans for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Intelligence Community (IC).
The Department of Homeland Security
The chapter on DHS is the most significant. It recommends dismantling the agency. At first that sounds like a good idea. DHS was ill-conceived. It was created after the terrorist attacks of September 11 based on a superficial idea to combine disparate agencies into one domestic security agency. But they share little in common. Operating them as components of one sprawling agency provides limited benefits from coordinating domestic security operations. DHS is often viewed as an agency in search of a national security mission, beyond the specific missions of its many quasi-independent components. It has limited investigative authority, outside immigration enforcement, and limited capabilities to gather intelligence. It relies on the FBI and other IC components for much of its information.
So the wisdom of devolving some DHS responsibilities is debatable. But there is only one motivation for the chapter’s recommendation. That is to turn DHS into an instrument solely devoted to draconian enforcement of a harsh immigration policy.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would be combined with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as one immigration enforcement component called the Border Security and Immigration Agency (BSIA). It would integrate “critical interdiction, enforcement, and investigative resources” and would become a member of the IC with a cabinet seat for meetings of the National Security Council. It would be a “stand-alone border and immigration agency at the Cabinet level” with “more than 100,000 employees, making it the third largest department measured by manpower.” The chapter states that “[p]rioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border, repair the historic damage done by the Biden Administration, return to a lawful and orderly immigration system, and protect the homeland from terrorism and public safety threats.”
This bulked-up enforcement agency would restore horse-mounted patrols at the border, detain undocumented immigrants to the maximum extent feasible pending removal, enhance detention facilities dramatically, work closely with DOJ to identify and round up undocumented workers and remove them, using expedited removal proceedings far more broadly than ever used before, and detain all aliens identified by state and local law enforcement.
The agency would also include DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), currently in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR); and DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL).
USCIS facilitates naturalization and resettlement. But it would be “returned to operating as a screening and vetting agency,” with a focus on identifying fraud rather than facilitating asylum and other immigration benefits. A “denaturalization unit” would be formed with the mission of stripping U.S. citizenship USCIS believes was obtained by fraud or other illegal means. A criminal investigative unit would be established within USCIS, connected to DOJ special assistant U.S. attorneys (SAUSAs) to prosecute immigration cases. It has in mind a close relationship between USCIS and DOJ. As noted in a previous post, the chapter on DOJ recommends that DOJ focus on immigration enforcement, including helping facilitate the legal authority for DOD to militarize the border.
Moreover, the chapter recommends moving DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation to DHS. That would give DHS unprecedented authority to litigate its own civil immigration cases in federal court, rather than relying on DOJ. With limited exceptions involving independent agencies, DOJ handles all cases in federal court. For good reason, DOJ generally determines the legal positions the government takes in litigation. The chapter’s recommendation would remove any institutional constraints on DHS civil enforcement.
The new agency would also include the immigration court system. It recommends transferring EOIR from DOJ to the new agency. This would create an agency that is, at once, an intelligence agency devoted to thwarting immigration, a vetting agency, an immigration enforcer, and the operator of the immigration court system that is supposed to provide fair hearings in immigration cases.
Visa eligibility and asylum criteria would be significantly narrowed and DHS would issue regulations to limit immigration in numerous ways. The chapter recommends new legislative authority that would authorize closing the border entirely in cases of “mass migration events.” That authority would allow the head of the agency to waive all provisions of the immigration laws.
Just as other chapters recommend ensuring thorough political control over the bureaucracy, the chapter’s anti-immigration policy priorities would be carried out by “an expansion of dedicated political personnel” at the agency; “an aggressive approach to Senate-confirmed leadership,” recognizing that the anti-immigration zealots who would fill these positions could not be confirmed by the Senate; and removing career leaders from lines of succession, to ensure continuity of control by political appointees. New leadership would exercise as much discretion as possible to close offices within DHS that do not fit these priorities and would reassign staff to these areas.
Consistent with the chapter on DOJ, the agency would be politicized to carry out faithfully this agenda. Important work in areas ranging from election integrity to domestic terrorism prevention would be scrapped or severely cut back, based on far-right sensitivities. Agencies such as FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) would be reduced and reassigned seemingly at random. CISA, which plays a key role in election security, would be assigned to the Department of Transportation. Bizarrely, the Coast Guard would be assigned to DOJ.
The chapter conceives of one agency that is an intelligence component and an enforcer but that is entrusted with the fair processing of immigration and naturalization cases, including asylum claims. A politicized immigration enforcement agency, which would become a member of the IC closely cooperating with the military and DOJ, would have profound consequences for civil liberties. The chapter makes clear that these powers would be used extensively not just at the border but in rounding up undocumented immigrants in the interior of the United States.
The Department of Defense
Consistent with the Project 2025 playbook, the DOD chapter asserts without evidence that DOD’s officer ranks are politicized to justify purging them. Oddly, it suggests DOD engages in “Marxist” indoctrination of troops. And it says respecting LGBTQ rights and woke DEI initiatives undermine DOD morale and war-fighting capacity. The chapter recommends “[a]udit[ing] the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminat[ing] tenure for academic professionals, and apply[ing] the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.”
Transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve in the military. It says “[g]ender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.”
It goes without saying, none of the allegations are supported with evidence or examples. They are simply asserted. The report needs no evidence, since the intended audience takes these types of allegations on faith.
The chapter says all DOD troops who refused the COVID vaccine should be reinstated with back pay. It asserts that imposing this requirement was a political decision. It fails to discuss how the COVID policy compares to DOD’s other vaccine mandates, the effect of COVID on military readiness, or the benefits of the COVID vaccine for military readiness. The chapter loyally follows the themes of the Project 2025 playbook, which invoke every right-wing talking point, from COVID, to DEI, to transgender fearmongering.
With respect to DOD military priorities, it recommends focusing on China. Off message based on recent events, it would also focus on countering Russia and supporting Ukraine. But consistent with other parts of the report, it would end DOD’s use of Cyber Command to conduct operations abroad to secure U.S. elections from foreign (mainly Russian) interference. Most significantly, its third priority (behind ending alleged politicization at DOD and confronting China and Russia) is supporting immigration enforcement. It says “[b]order protection is a national security issue that requires sustained attention and effort by all elements of the executive branch.”
So here again, we see plans to militarize the border. As discussed in the post about DOJ, deploying the military at the border to enforce federal law would require invoking the Insurrection Act. That would be unprecedented.
The Intelligence Community
The chapter on the IC recommends significantly enhancing the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). That would enhance White House control over the Central Intelligence Agency and the rest of the IC components. Though the chapter invokes less right-wing rhetoric than the others, the editors appear to have added a throwaway line that “future IC leadership must address the widely promoted ‘woke’ culture that has spread throughout the federal government with identity politics and ‘social justice’ advocacy replacing such traditional American values as patriotism, colorblindness, and even workplace competence.”
The primary recommendation is to enhance the power of the DNI. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established after September 11 and the intelligence failures that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The idea was to create a central authority over the IC to ensure proper prioritization of threats and coordination among IC components, including CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, and others. As the chapter notes, legislative compromises and institutional norms within the IC have prevented ODNI from serving as a strong coordinator of IC activities. There are arguments in favor of strengthening ODNI. But as with the plan to dismantle DHS, the context is important. Strengthening ODNI would give the Administration one neck to wring when trying to rein in a supposed deep state IC. Viewed in the context of the other recommendations in the report to politicize the federal bureaucracy and agencies, the recommendation takes on a more sinister shape.
Regarding the CIA, the chapter carries forward the report’s theme of “reining in the bureaucracy.” It recommends largely replacing senior management at the CIA, halting all current hiring, and placing additional political appointees throughout the agency “to assist the Director in supervising its functioning.” The Director should “divert resources from any activities that promote unnecessary and distracting social engineering,” whatever that includes. And the CIA would focus hiring on individuals “willing to accept high risks,” to refocus CIA as an “OSS-like culture.”
The chapter proposes expanding covert action authority, which is currently exercised only by CIA, to DOD. This would be a dramatic change. The recommendation appears to be based partly on the erroneous suggestion that DOD cannot engage in cyber activities without covert action authority. Congress passed a law specifically to allow DOD to engage in such activity, without covert action authority. Authorizing DOD to engage in other forms of covert action would be inconsistent with longstanding DOD norms, including compliance with international law and the laws of war. Covert action, almost by definition, violates international law, including sovereignty, and reaches areas far beyond strategic preparation of the military environment or the use of military force. This is another example of the report repeatedly enhancing the authority of the military in areas outside its traditional sphere.
As with the DOJ chapter, the IC chapter mischaracterizes activity in connection with the 2016 election and the “suppression” of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation to justify auditing the IC for “past politicization,” revoking the security clearances of former IC leaders “who discuss their work in the press or on social media without prior clearance from the current Director,” and firing and referring for prosecution any employee “suspected of leaking information.” It recommends that retired IC leaders should not become public figures. The recommendations are directed at former IC leaders such as John Brennan and James Clapper, who strongly criticized Trump. The recommendation is to punish former leaders who criticize a current administration, no matter how egregious the abuses and no matter how important the criticism. And it would set a norm under which former IC leaders, who are most qualified to discuss significant issues affecting the government, would decline to participate in public discourse to avoid becoming “public figures.” These are among the most authoritarian recommendations in the chapter.
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Like the chapters covered in previous posts—relating to the White House and OMB, and DOJ—the chapters on DHS, DOD, and the IC recommend creating a system of highly ideological political control over national security. It would repurpose those agencies in whole or part to carry out a far-right agenda. The new national security focus would be immigration and a new Cold War with China. Election interference by Russia is minimized. And any former IC officials critical of Trump would be punished. Recognizing the difficulty a Trump administration would face confirming the officials who would carry out this agenda, the chapters recommend layering lower levels of the bureaucracy with loyal political appointees and relying on officials in an acting capacity. The recommendations are a significant threat to established norms. While many would rely on legislation, such as reorganizing DHS, many others could be accomplished through executive discretion—particularly those that involve cracking down on immigration.