Barbara Boxer: DHS was a mistake. I regret voting for it.

I never imagined a president like Trump when I voted to create the Department of Homeland Security

By Barbara Boxer
Barbara Boxer of a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 1993 and the United States Senate from 1993 to 2017.
7/25/2020, 6:00:56 a.m.

Here are the three words that no elected official, serving or retired, wants to say: “I was wrong.”

Throughout my career, I was known for taking some very lonely votes. But I made a mistake in 2002 when I voted to create the Department of Homeland Security, which had been recommended by a number of members of Congress in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 the year before.

Looking back in the congressional record, I could hear the doubts in my voice.

“I have tremendous misgivings about the size and shape of this department,” I said. I warned that people could “less accountable, hiding under layers of bureaucracy.” I worried out loud on the Senate floor about including FEMA, the Coast Guard and immigration agencies into one giant department.

Still, most people thought this was a good idea. The memory of 9/11 haunted me: The hijacked airplanes were headed to California, which I represented, and I’d lost constituents in the attack. The World Trade Center collapsed in the city where I was born.

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