Homeland Security : A Reference Handbook

This book provides a comprehensive summary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and efforts to protect the United States from international terrorism. Homeland Security: A Reference Handbook covers the precursor events and laws from 1965 to 2000 that set the stage for the 2002 law that established the Department of Homeland Security. It identifies and discusses a dozen problems associated with homeland security policy objectively, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions. Additionally, it addresses all of the major units and agencies within the department. Comprehensive in scope and accessible in style, it discusses 46 organizations and profiles 50 actors. Unlike many books on the topic, it provides excerpts and summaries of data, presented in figures and tables and as documents from court decisions, presidential actions, and key laws to implement homeland security policy. It also annotates key secondary sources on the topic, including books, scholarly journals, films, and videos to guide the reader to further research on the subject. * Provides readers with an objective, nonpartisan perspective on the complexity of enacting and implementing homeland security policy so that readers may better understand how difficult it is to combat terrorism * Illuminates how "lone-wolf" terrorists become radicalized and why they are so difficult for the government to protect against * Suggests more than a dozen proposed solutions to the vexing problems associated with protecting the United States from international terrorism * Details how immigration and homeland security are inherently related, and why Arab- and Muslim-American minorities suffer the brunt of the negative effects of the nation's border security crackdown * Explains why unauthorized immigration from Mexico and Central America has risen exponentially since 1970 and why policy to deal with illegal immigration poses such a conundrum