The Department of Homeland Security has a reputation of being “broken and dysfunctional,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said Friday at her confirmation hearing to head DHS, adding that morale is low at the 240,000-employee agency, the nation’s third-largest. Noem said the agency’s employees “have to show up for work," reports the Washington Post. “If they don’t want to show up for work, then maybe they’re just not truly passionate about protecting America,” she said. “I’m going to remind them what their jobs are. Some of these Border Patrol agents haven’t been able to do their jobs for a very long time. They’ve been processing paperwork and facilitating an invasion when they should be back securing our border, which is why they were recruited and wanted to serve there to begin with.”
Noem said the Trump administration will get rid of a Customs and Border Protection app known as CBP One that has eased illegal border crossings by having migrants make an appointment to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Noem also raised questions about the Secret Service, Some have called for diminishing the agency’s investigative side, which probes child exploitation and financial crimes, and shoring up the protective details that shield U.S. presidents and others. “My understanding is that that investigation side is often used to train the protective, detailed officers, but clearly, they are not focusing on what their true duty is, and that needs to get back on to what they were created for,” Noem said. “And that was the protective detail mission and emergency situations that they need to help plan and prepare for and defend.”