Congress Attached No Strings to the Border Billions. DHS Should Add Its Own.

The Secure America Act gives DHS roughly $72 billion with almost no oversight attached. Spent prudently and in the open, it can strengthen security, legal immigration, travel, tourism, and the economy at once.

The Secure America Act put roughly $72 billion behind immigration enforcement through 2029, the largest such infusion in the Department's history, and it arrives with almost no oversight. Three gaps stand out:

• No appropriations strings. The money moved through reconciliation, not appropriations, so the conditions, spend plans, and use restrictions that normally govern such funds do not attach.

• No enacted conditions. The FY2026 oversight provisions appropriators drafted, spend plans, Inspector General review, and monthly detention briefings, were never enacted.

• Hollowed expertise and internal oversight. The build-out left DHS out of balance. ICE and CBP surged, ICE alone doubling to 22,000 officers, while CISA lost about a third of its staff, FEMA shed more than 2,000, and TSA was cut, thinning the cybersecurity, disaster, and aviation expertise DHS relies on. Oversight fared worst. In March 2025 DHS gutted its three statutory oversight offices, cutting Civil Rights and Civil Liberties from about 150 staff to nine, and has since permanently closed the Immigration Detention Ombudsman.

Because Congress attached no strings, the duty to spend these funds prudently, lawfully, and transparently falls entirely on DHS, and Secretary Markwayne Mullin now holds that discretion. Used well, it can serve legal immigration, travel, tourism, and the economy, not just enforcement. Four priorities follow.

Identity and the Border

• Complete biometric entry-exit and modernize the ports. A biometric entry and exit system was a core 9/11 Commission recommendation on terrorist travel, and it is finally in good shape at air and sea ports. Real gaps remain: exit tracking is incomplete at the land border, document fraud is hard to catch at entry, and coverage is not universal because citizens can opt out.

• Build the traveler file around the person. In 2004 the 9/11 Commission called for combining biometric entry-exit data with visitor and immigrant files and intelligence. I authored that recommendation, and it is still only partly realized.

The point is person-centricity: anchoring every immigration encounter to one biometric-assured identity, so a person is recognized as they move across the agencies that issue visas, control entry, adjudicate benefits, and enforce the law. OBIM's overhaul of IDENT is the right foundation, even if the cost overruns and cancellation of the replacement system mean OBIM's operations still warrant close internal and external oversight.

Enforcement That Matches Its Training

• Keep ICE within its mission and its training. ICE and Homeland Security Investigations are built for transnational crime, counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and trafficking, not Border Patrol style street work. Pulling agents into traffic stops and open-air arrests they were not trained for endangers officers and the public and drains its core missions.

This summer's World Cup and 250th showed the better model: security delivered at scale when federal, state, local, and international partners coordinate, each within its lane. Where agents do make field arrests, equip them with body-worn cameras, with clear rules for how footage is accessed, retained, and used, to protect officers and the public alike.

Lawful Immigration and the Workforce

• Make lawful immigration and worksite compliance work. USCIS is sitting on a backlog near 11.6 million cases while people who followed the rules wait months for a decision. DHS should resource USCIS to decide the cases before it.

Worksite enforcement, meanwhile, has escalated: ICE reclassified once-correctable I-9 errors as substantive violations, ended the cure period, and audits at ten times the 2024 rate. Employers now face immediate fines and criminal exposure, often for honest mistakes. If we hold them to that standard, we have to acknowledge that the small businesses and farms that make up most of America could simply lose their businesses. That does not help our economy or our security.

Transparency and Accountability

• Impose the transparency Congress did not. DHS should publish spend plans, restore meaningful detention inspections, and brief Congress monthly, adopting the controls appropriators drafted but never enacted.

• Rebuild accountability. Give real authority and access to the oversight and reporting offices, the Privacy Office, the Inspector General, and the Office of Immigration Statistics, whose data shows what the Department does.

Rebuilding these institutions, and public trust in them, will not be easy. But the Secretary has to do it. We cannot have a DHS that is not built on transparency of its facts and actions.

The money is certain through 2029. Whether it builds lasting capability and public trust or simply expands is not. Secretary Mullin can choose the first, and it would be both sound security and a legacy worth claiming.

Janice Kephart served as border counsel to the 9/11 Commission, where she authored its terrorist travel recommendations. She authored the DHS Biometric Technology Report and is former director of the Biometric Interagency Working Group at DHS. She is founder of Identity Strategy Partners and founder and CEO of ZipID, an automated, biometric identity verification and I-9 platform that helps employers confirm both identity and work authorization under ICE enforcement, as well as an active member of CNSI.