Homeland Security Issues Research Articles

The Department of Homeland Security Issues First Guidance on Statelessness

The Department of Homeland Security Issues First Guidance on Statelessness

The US-Mexican Border and Contemporary American Immigration Policy

There have been several periods in American history that are referred to as turbulent times. They were characterized by a wide range of changes that happened to respond to issues that brought anxiety, threat, discontent, or trouble. Donald Trump’s presidency and the Covid‑19 pandemic significantly influenced American immigration policy and the lives of immigrants. The present article pays special attention to the Mexican‑American border. This area plays a crucial role in migration studies focusing on the Americas for at least two reasons: international relations between Mexico (and the Latin American region) and the United States, and homeland security issues related to irregular and regular migrant flows. This study aims to determine what changes have been implemented in border policy, investigate why they occurred, and finally, discuss their results. The article analyzes the most challenging issues characteristic of the situation of unaccompanied minor migrants, the concept of Trump’s wall or the ‘remain in Mexico’ program. The US‑Mexican border studies have played a crucial role in research dedicated to American immigration policy since its inception. Today, it is also an area of concern and special attention is paid to this region due to the dynamics of processes taking place at the border. The work presented here discusses and highlights the most turbulent issues that echoed not only in the United States but also worldwide.

Hybrid halide perovskite neutron detectors

Interest in fast and easy detection of high-energy radiation (x-, γ-rays and neutrons) is closely related to numerous practical applications ranging from biomedicine and industry to homeland security issues. In this regard, crystals of hybrid halide perovskite have proven to be excellent detectors of x- and γ-rays, offering exceptionally high sensitivities in parallel to the ease of design and handling. Here, we demonstrate that by assembling a methylammonium lead tri-bromide perovskite single crystal (CH3NH3PbBr3 SC) with a Gadolinium (Gd) foil, one can very efficiently detect a flux of thermal neutrons. The neutrons absorbed by the Gd foil turn into γ-rays, which photo-generate charge carriers in the CH3NH3PbBr3 SC. The induced photo-carriers contribute to the electric current, which can easily be measured, providing information on the radiation intensity of thermal neutrons. The dependence on the beam size, bias voltage and the converting distance is investigated. To ensure stable and efficient charge extraction, the perovskite SCs were equipped with carbon electrodes. Furthermore, other types of conversion layers were also tested, including borated polyethylene sheets as well as Gd grains and Gd2O3 pellets directly engulfed into the SCs. Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) radiation transport code calculations quantitatively confirmed the detection mechanism herein proposed.

A pillar-layered Cd(II) metal-organic framework for selective detection of organic explosives

The detection of explosives is crucial for homeland security, environmental cleaning, and military issues. As a new class of porous materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising platforms for the detection of organic explosives. In this work, a new pillar-layered Cd(II) MOF, [CdL0.5dpe0.5]·2H2O (BUT-202, H4L = 4,8-disulfonaphthalene-2,6-dicarboxylic acid, dpe = 1,2-bis(4-pyridyl)ethylene), was synthesized and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, infrared spectroscopy, and elemental analysis. BUT-202 has good fluorescent properties, which can be selectively quenched by trace amounts of 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP) in DMF with low detection limit of 0.2 μM.

Homeland security and Texas’ high-speed rail

A private corporation is proposing a high-speed intercity passenger train system to operate between Dallas and Houston, Texas using Japanese technology and methods. This project brings with it unique and unprecedented homeland security issues. A modern high-speed rail system is a network of potential vulnerabilities, and terrorist groups have identified public transportation as desirable targets. This paper reviews potential vulnerabilities and threats, describes the proposed project, and details possible options for safety, security, and intelligence. The author then puts these items in the context of public policy and makes a series of recommendations regarding the government’s role in the provision of homeland security for the proposed train. Specifically, the author recommends the State of Texas set required homeland security standards for high-speed rail projects.

Spectral analysis of shielded gamma ray sources using precalculated library data

In this work, an approach has been developed for determining the intensity of a shielded source by first determining the thicknesses of three different shielding materials from a passively collected gamma-ray spectrum by making comparisons with predetermined shielded spectra. These evaluations are dependent on the accuracy and validity of the predetermined library spectra which were created by changing the thicknesses of the three chosen materials lead, aluminum and wood that are used to simulate any actual shielding. Each of the spectra produced was generated using MCNP5 with a sufficiently large number of histories to ensure a low relative error at each channel. The materials were held in the same respective order from source to detector, where each material consisted of three individual thicknesses and a null condition. This then produced two separate data sets of 27 total shielding material situations and subsequent predetermined libraries that were created for each radionuclide source used. The technique used to calculate the thicknesses of the materials implements a Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear search that employs a tri-linear interpolation with the respective predetermined libraries within each channel for the supplied input unknown spectrum. Given that the nonlinear parameters require an initial guess for the calculations, the approach demonstrates first that when the correct values are input, the correct thicknesses are found. It then demonstrates that when multiple trials of random values are input for each of the nonlinear parameters, the average of the calculated solutions that successfully converges also produced the correct thicknesses. Under situations with sufficient information known about the detection situation at hand, the method was shown to behave in a manner that produces reasonable results and can serve as a good preliminary solution. This technique has the capability to be used in a variety of full spectrum inverse analysis problems including homeland security issues.

Police Psychologists as Expert Witnesses in Appeal Hearings: Testimony for Disqualified Applicants and Fitness-for-Duty Forensic Psychological Evaluations

The Boston Marathon Bombing is a terrorizing international reminder of the intertwined domestic and Homeland Security scene management demands confronted by police officers. Protests following the death of three black males indicate that police must exercise integrity and maintain public trust despite boundary intrusions from their surging personal life stressors. The post-Ferguson psychological screening, training, retention, and supervision of police officers are nonetheless challenging. The Boston Marathon Bombings, Homeland Security issues and Ferguson, Missouri incident all point to the relevance that psychological evaluations play as a critical tool in shaping how departments make decisions about applicants and incumbent officers. Police departments have mandated psychological evaluations for applicants and have implemented fitness-for-duty triggering mechanisms for those desiring to remain police officers after some perceived misconduct. Litigation alleging negligent hire or retention factors tends to reinforce the need for a suitability operational standard of “rule out” for police psychological evaluations. The decisions from these evaluations lead to appeal situations as individuals may disagree with what they view as unfavorable psychological findings and recommendations. This article examines forensic issues related to the appeal process, with considerable attention devoted to preparation factors associated with a psychologist’s sworn testimony often provided at appellant hearings.

Low Energy Accelerators for Cargo Inspection

Cargo inspection by X-rays has become essential for seaports and airports. With the emphasis on homeland security issues, the identification of dangerous things, such as explosive items and nuclear materials, is the key feature of a cargo inspection system. And new technologies based on dual energy X-rays, neutrons and monoenergetic X-rays have been studied to achieve sufficiently good material identification. An interpretation of the principle of X-ray cargo inspection technology and the features of X-ray sources are presented in this article. As most of the X-ray sources are based on RF electron linear accelerators (linacs), we give a relatively detailed description of the principle and characteristics of linacs. Cargo inspection technologies based on neutron imaging, neutron analysis, nuclear resonance fluorescence and computer tomography are also mentioned here. The main vendors and their products are summarized at the end of the article.

Lobbying after 9/11: Policy Regime Emergence and Interest Group Mobilization

Does the emergence of a new boundary‐spanning policy regime shift the focus of well‐established organized interests, or does it mobilize new ones? In this article, I show that interest groups with a presence in Washington before 9/11 rapidly—but temporarily—shift their attention to the homeland security issues. Established groups' entrenchment in antecedent subsystems appears to buffer against widespread policy disruption and interest upheaval. However, a new set of previously latent groups opportunistically mobilizes after the regime is institutionalized. Newly mobilized groups replace those that retreat back to the regime's antecedent subsystems. Though the policy regime fails to resolve the jurisdictional turf conflicts that triggered its creation, the institutionalization of homeland security generates its own original, distinct government demand for lobbying. Interests that previously had no business in Washington before 9/11 took advantage of the new opportunities the regime offered without supplanting interests established long before the Department of Homeland Security and its congressional committees existed.

Psychometric and Demographic Predictors of the Perceived Risk of Terrorist Threats and the Willingness to Pay for Terrorism Risk Management Programs

A 2009 national telephone survey of 924 U.S. adults assessed perceptions of terrorism and homeland security issues. Respondents rated severity of effects, level of understanding, number affected, and likelihood of four terrorist threats: poisoned water supply; explosion of a small nuclear device in a major U.S. city; an airplane attack similar to 9/11; and explosion of a bomb in a building, train, subway, or highway. Respondents rated perceived risk and willingness to pay (WTP) for dealing with each threat. Demographic, attitudinal, and party affiliation data were collected. Respondents rated bomb as highest in perceived risk but gave the highest WTP ratings to nuclear device. For both perceived risk and WTP, psychometric variables were far stronger predictors than were demographic ones. OLS regression analyses using both types of variables to predict perceived risk found only two significant demographic predictors for any threat--Democrat (a negative predictor for bomb) and white male (a significant positive predictor for airline attack). In contrast, among psychometric variables, severity, number affected, and likelihood were predictors of all four threats and level of understanding was a predictor for one. For WTP, education was a negative predictor for three threats; no other demographic variables were significant predictors for any threat. Among psychometric variables, perceived risk and number affected were positive predictors of WTP for all four threats; severity and likelihood were predictors for three; level of understanding was a significant predictor for two.

Policy Domain Emergence and Interest Group Agendas

Does the emergence of a new policy domain shift the focus of well-established organized interests or does it initiate the mobilization of new ones? Because issues emerge and recede from the public agenda as a function of the political process, and because government attention creates a demand for the mobilization of interests, I hypothesize that the advent of a new policy domain will initially shift the attention of long-established interests, but activate new interests as the domain develops over time. Moreover, the newly mobilized groups will concentrate their attention on the newly defined conflict, whereas established groups’ commitment to existing domains limits their ability to prioritize new issues. The emergence of the homeland security policy image in reaction to 9/11 represents an identifiable punctuation in government attention, allowing me to test the impact of this intervention on lobbying activities. Using disclosure reports from 1,782 interest groups reporting activity between 1998 and 2008, I compare groups’ establishment of a presence in DC to their entry into the new Homeland Security issue area. Organizations with an established presence in DC are twice as likely to become engaged in homeland security issues as the domain emerges, but those with a short-term or no prior presence are nearly three times as likely to enter the domain after it becomes institutionalized. Moreover, controlling for organizational advantages and stakeholder interests, the relative time that an organization has had a presence in Washington has the strongest impact on its prioritization of homeland security issues.

Development and Implementation of a Functional Exercise to Assess Public Health Agency Response to Foodborne Bioterrorism

Agroterrorism and food terrorism have been identified as important homeland security issues by officials in the public health, government, and food industry sectors of the U.S. Intentional contamination of food has already occurred both abroad and in North America. Outbreak investigation and control measures in response to intentional contamination differ from those employed in cases of naturally occurring contamination. Operations-based exercise efforts specific to bioterrorism events are essential to train public health personnel and first responders to consider the possibility of deliberate contamination during an outbreak investigation. A recent search of the Rand Corporation's Public Health Preparedness database identified no operations-based (functional or full-scale) exercises involving foodborne contamination with a biological or chemical agent.This manuscript describes a functional exercise developed and conducted by the University of Illinois, College of Veterinary Medicine, Section of Community Health and Preventive Medicine. The functional exercise simulated a food-borne terrorism event and was designed to evaluate the efficacy of the Food Emergency Response Plan (FERP) of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), Division of Food, Drugs and Dairies (DFDD). The exercise was held on November 18th and 19th, 2008 at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL.Based on this and previous exercises and training programs developed and conducted by CHPM, it is apparent that the more exercise designers, evaluators and public health and support agency participants move away from discussion based exercises and towards operations based exercises, the more strengths and deficiencies in preparation and response of participating agencies are revealed. Although public health agencies have begun training personnel and partner agencies to consider intentional contamination of food during an outbreak investigation, the relative lack of widespread operations-based exercises to assess preparedness in response to an intentional incident of food-borne contamination seems to be an important deficiency in homeland security. Additional funding to create opportunities for public health and first responder personnel to participate in operations-based bioterrorism response exercises is needed.

Escaping the Entanglement: Reversing Jurisdictional Fragmentation over the Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was born in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and represents one of the largest ever reorganizations of the U.S. government. Although the department's creation precipitated a complex conglomeration of 22 diverse agencies and offices, the institutional response in the U.S. Congress has been similarly complex. Ambiguities in the jurisdictions of congressional committees, exacerbated by the emergence of new homeland security issues, have led to a highly fragmented oversight of the six-year-old department. In the 110th Congress, for example, 86 committees and subcommittees asserted some form of jurisdiction over the DHS. After considering the effects of fragmentation on the DHS, this paper considers the experience of three other, relatively young departments. In doing so, it becomes evident that the DHS' experience is anomalous among executive departments. Analysis of hearing data from 2007-2008 reveals a number of key faultlines in committee jurisdictions over the DHS. After probing those areas of contention between committees, this paper makes recommendations as to what jurisdictional changes can be made to reverse the fragmentation trend in Congress. Lastly, success in consolidating congressional jurisdiction over the DHS must be politically realistic, acknowledging likely institutional resistance. While the ideal strategy would be immediate statutory reforms to committee jurisdictions in the 111th Congress, a more incremental campaign to streamline oversight of the DHS may be necessary in the long run. Through the implementation of these proposals, the debilitating effects of fragmentation on senior department leadership and mission execution can be minimized.

Analogical Reasoning and Complexity

The article explores the use of analogical reasoning to understand homeland defense and security issues. Analogical reasoning relies on the analysis of historical precedents. While much value can be inferred from examining historical precedents, accelerated change in contemporary societies decrease its relevance for understanding future events. This article considers whether complexity theory can complement the analogical approach. We formulate a theory of global violence and instability based on analogical reasoning and complexity theory to explicate why violent events persist despite countermeasures taken to contain them. This theory elucidates the phenomenon of escalating violence and explains why movements that perpetrate violence do not quickly mellow. We conclude with testable propositions and suggestions about the practical relevance of the theoretical framework for containing contemporary violence.

Emergency preparedness: Using the Internet to educate the public

This research examines the use of the Internet to educate the public on emergency management and homeland security issues. Despite the fact that disasters, when they occur, happen at the local level and directly impact the general public, the public is conspicuously absent from emergency management planning and training activities at all levels. This is true despite research which suggests that the public, given accurate and relevant information, can respond well to disasters. Educating the public on possible disasters, response scenarios, and other key emergency management issues is a critical first step to engaging the public in emergency management. The current research investigates the use of one means of educating the public, the Internet, on emergency management and homeland security issues. Content analysis of the 50 largest cities in one Midwestern state was conducted to determine the following: if the Internet is used to educate the public, the types of homeland security and emergency management information available to the public on city web sites, and how difficult the existing information is to access. Results show that few cities are using the Internet as a means of educating the public on emergency management issues. Future research should investigate other means by which the general public should be educated and engaged in emergency management and how the public is using the emergency management information available to them.

Emergency management and homeland security curricula: Contexts, cultures, and constraints

During the past three decades, emergency management has become more professionalized. An important part of this transformation has been the explosive growth in higher education of programs designed to provide the fundamental knowledge and skills required of emergency managers. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, however, curricula reflecting homeland security issues and competencies also have been established. Some have proposed that these program areas should be better integrated. Following a brief summary of the historical context in which these developments occurred, key points of culture clash are identified. It is concluded that future faculty and administrative initiatives will be constrained by these cultural differences and deflected by future governmental policies, disaster events, and other external factors.

The Politics of Vulnerability: Constructing Local Performance Regimes for Homeland Security

AbstractParadoxically, the greater the national security threats, the more important the role of local policy in the United States. In this article we examine homeland security initiatives—particularly the tension between risk and vulnerability—and the governance dilemmas they pose for local communities. In contrast to the usual emphasis on coordination and capacity, we argue for conceptualizing local imperatives attendant to homeland security as collective action problems requiring the construction of local performance regimes. Performance regimes must engage three challenges: (1) to enlist diverse stakeholders around a collective local security goal despite varying perceptions of its immediacy; (2) to persuade participants to sustain their involvement in the face of competing demands, and (3) to create a durable coalition around performance goals necessary for reducing local vulnerability. Using these analytic categories casts local homeland security issues in strategic terms; it also encourages comparisons of local governance arrangements to respond to risk and vulnerability.

Aux armes, citoyens: Cyber security and regulation in the United States

Government policy for cyber security in the United States relies on voluntary and cooperative action by the private sector and has, until now, explicitly rejected the use of mandate or regulation. This stands in contrast to other defense and homeland security issues, such as those involving border protection or transportation, where government intervention is the norm. The decision to rely on voluntary action for cyber security reflects influential trends in security policies, deregulation, and the government's relation to the Internet that continue to shape US policy even after the attacks of September 11. The result is an ineffectual policy that underestimates the role of government.

The Need for a Policy Framework to Develop Disaster Resilient Regions

The United States will increasingly face threats and remain vulnerable to acts of terrorism and other disasters despite the many physical protection measures currently in place. While physical protection can limit or discourage attacks, the unfortunate reality is that nothing is ever 100% effective. In an interdependent age, spending money solely on physical protection will not solve the vulnerability problem (Scaling & Morrison, 2003, Scalingi 2004, Brown, 2004).A new approach must be taken not only to physically protect critical infrastructure but to prevent and deter attacks. This more comprehensive approach must include vulnerability assessments, risk-based mitigation, response and recovery after a disaster, training at all levels, more exercises and research and development (Mussington, 2002, Scalingi, 2003, 2004, Mencer, 2003, Brown, 2004). This broadened approach should help limit the overall impact of a disaster as well as deter potential attackers.A comprehensive approach to emergency management, specifically critical infrastructure security, cannot be accomplished if the private sector is excluded from these efforts. Because 85% of the nation’s infrastructure is controlled by the private sector, the government’s new programs and policies must be fashioned to encourage their participation.The federal government must recognize that critical infrastructure security planning must be conducted on a regional level. Incentives and guidelines to help move this planning process forward may be needed to ensure that the right players are involved. Moreover, the successes of other regional collaborations must be reviewed to determine whether these examples could be appropriated to address homeland security issues. Until this happens, the nation will continue down the path where individual agencies and jurisdictions prepare and respond to disasters on their own terms.

The Growing Threat: Homeland Security Issues of Bulgaria

This article presents the main problems in adapting security establishments of democratic countries to the challenges of spreading terrorism in a globalized world. The focus is on problems facing post-communist countries. The author argues that, both during the early stages of democratization and in the ongoing security sector reform, the emphasis is on democratic civilian control and too little attention is paid to operational effectiveness. Furthermore, all democratic countries face the problem of achieving effectiveness of the security organizations while preserving and protecting democratic values. The concept of homeland security, among others, may be used to strengthen international and interagency cooperation in dealing with the security challenges of the Twenty First century.