Jeh Johnson Is Right About One Thing — And Wrong About Everything Else

When Your Opponent Gives You an Opening

Jeh Johnson spent four years running the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama. He presided over a border policy that released hundreds of thousands of migrants into the interior under catch-and-release arrangements that made a mockery of enforcement. He watched the Obama administration exercise prosecutorial discretion so broadly it functionally amnestied an entire class of illegal immigrants. And now he's appearing on television to scold both parties about funding fights.

Give him credit for nerve.

Johnson's core argument, delivered to The Hill, is that Congress needs to stop using DHS appropriations as a political weapon — that the constant continuing resolutions and budget brinksmanship leave the department unable to plan, unable to hire, unable to modernize. He's not entirely wrong about the operational effects. Agencies do function worse under perpetual fiscal uncertainty. That's a real problem.

But the diagnosis being correct doesn't make the prescription right. And Johnson's prescription, stripped of its bipartisan packaging, amounts to: give the executive branch a big, clean budget and trust it to secure the border. That's not governance. That's capitulation dressed in the language of good management.

The Funding Fight IS The Accountability Mechanism

Congressional conservatives have used DHS appropriations as leverage precisely because the normal oversight mechanisms have failed. Oversight hearings produce evasive testimony. Inspector general reports get buried. Presidential administrations — Democratic ones in particular, but not exclusively — have demonstrated a systematic willingness to under-enforce immigration law and then dare Congress to do something about it.

What can Congress do? It can fund or not fund. That's the constitutional lever available. The power of the purse is not a procedural annoyance — it is the foundational check written into Article I of the Constitution by men who understood what unconstrained executive power looks like.

When Johnson says "we've got to stop with these funding fights," he's asking Congress to unilaterally disarm from the one weapon that actually creates consequences for executive branch misbehavior. The fact that it causes operational disruption is a feature, not a bug. Discomfort creates accountability. Frictionless funding creates impunity.

Consider what DHS actually did with its money under Johnson's tenure. In fiscal year 2016, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported fewer people than in any year since 2006 — roughly 240,000 removals — despite record numbers of border encounters. The agency had the funding. It had the personnel. It had explicit statutory authority. It chose not to use them, because the Obama administration had decided that aggressive interior enforcement was politically inconvenient.

The Real Crisis Is Trust, Not Appropriations

Johnson frames this as a management problem. It is actually a trust problem. And management solutions don't fix trust problems.

Congressional Republicans don't trust that a well-funded DHS will use those resources to actually enforce the law, because they have watched — across multiple administrations, but especially under Biden — the department actively resist enforcement while maintaining the posture of operational constraint. The talking point has been the same for fifteen years: we need more resources. Congress provides resources. Enforcement stays flat or declines. The request for more resources continues.

At some point, the only honest response is: show me what you'll do with what you have before I give you more.

Johnson knows this dynamic. He participated in it. Asking him to adjudicate the funding debate is like asking a defense attorney to run the prosecution.

The path toward functional homeland security is not a clean appropriations bill handed to whichever party controls the executive branch. It is enforcement mechanisms with teeth — mandatory deportation standards, visa overstay consequences that actually trigger, sanctuary city funding penalties that actually apply — paired with appropriations tied to measurable outcomes.

That's harder to pass. It requires sustained political will. It won't produce the kind of clean governance that former cabinet officials like to endorse on Sunday morning television. But it reflects the actual lesson of the last twenty years: trust in institutions must be earned, not assumed. And right now, DHS has not earned it.