Homeland Security Act Signed November 25, 2002: DHS Is Created

President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act on Monday, November 25, 2002, creating the Department of Homeland Security. The new department brought all or part of 22 federal agencies, from the Coast Guard to the Secret Service, under a single Cabinet secretary, with nearly 170,000 employees. Bush called it “the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since Harry Truman signed the National Security Act.”

From a White House Office to a Cabinet Department

The idea grew directly out of the September 11 attacks. In his address to Congress on September 20, 2001, Bush announced that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge would lead a new homeland security effort. On October 8, 2001, Ridge was sworn in as director of the Office of Homeland Security, a White House office created by Executive Order 13228 to coordinate a national strategy against terrorist attacks.

The office was a coordinating body inside the White House, led by an assistant to the president, rather than a department with its own budget and workforce. Some members of Congress had pushed for a permanent, Cabinet-level post set in law.

On June 6, 2002, Bush went on national television to propose exactly that. He described a Cabinet-level department that would bring together agencies such as the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, the Customs Service, immigration officials, the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As many as a hundred federal agencies had some homeland security responsibility, he noted, and no single official was accountable for the whole.

Why the Bill Stalled, Then Passed

Representative Dick Armey of Texas introduced the bill, H.R. 5005, on June 24, 2002, and the House passed it 295-132 on July 26. The Senate was another matter.

The fight was over people. The administration wanted broad flexibility to hire, fire, promote and reassign the department’s workers and to exempt some of them from union coverage on national security grounds. Senate Democrats, who held a narrow majority, wanted stronger civil service and collective bargaining protections. The bill sat through the fall campaign.

The November 5 midterm elections broke the deadlock. After Republican gains on Election Day, Democratic resistance to the administration’s personnel demands faded. The White House struck a compromise with Senators John Breaux, Ben Nelson and Lincoln Chafee: the department would have to negotiate with unions before changing employment rules, and the president could waive union rights for national security reasons after notifying Congress and waiting 10 days.

Date	Step
October 8, 2001	Tom Ridge sworn in as director of the White House Office of Homeland Security
June 6, 2002	Bush proposes a Cabinet department in a national address
July 26, 2002	House passes H.R. 5005, 295-132
November 5, 2002	Midterm elections
November 13, 2002	House passes the compromise version
November 19, 2002	Senate passes the bill, 90-9
November 25, 2002	Bush signs the Homeland Security Act
January 24, 2003	The law takes effect; Ridge sworn in as the first secretary
March 1, 2003	Most transferred agencies formally join the department

The signing came three days before Thanksgiving, which fell on November 28 in 2002, and 440 days after the attacks, a gap you can check with the days-between-dates calculator.

What the Department of Homeland Security Brought Together

The Department of Homeland Security’s own history lists 22 agencies and programs that moved in, drawn from the Treasury, Justice, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services departments, the FBI and the General Services Administration. Among the best known:

• US Coast Guard and US Secret Service, which moved in largely intact
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• US Customs Service from Treasury, later divided into Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Immigration and Naturalization Service from Justice, split among CBP, ICE and US Citizenship and Immigration Services
• Transportation Security Administration, created only a year earlier at the Transportation Department
• Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and the Federal Protective Service
• Research and response units such as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and the Nuclear Incident Response Team

The law moved other pieces in the opposite direction. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, for example, shifted from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department.

Standing Up the New Department

At the signing, Bush said the department would analyze threats, guard the nation’s borders and airports, protect critical infrastructure and coordinate the response to future emergencies, and he announced he would nominate Ridge as secretary. “The hard work of building a new department begins today,” he said.

The Senate confirmed Ridge unanimously, and on January 24, 2003, the day the law took effect, he was sworn in as the first Secretary of Homeland Security. The department became the 15th executive department in the Cabinet. On Saturday, March 1, 2003, most of the transferred agencies formally became part of DHS, and the INS’s functions were divided among three new bureaus.

The Department’s Legacy

Some of the original arrangements did not last. The Strategic National Stockpile and the National Disaster Medical System returned to the Department of Health and Human Services in July 2004, and the Federal Protective Service moved out of ICE in 2009. Those adjustments aside, the core of the design, with border, immigration, transportation security, disaster response and the Coast Guard under one secretary, was in place by the spring of 2003.

For the political year that produced it, see the full 2002 calendar, and for the department’s first months, the 2003 calendar. The Election Day page explains how the date of the November 5 midterms was set.