Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoffis an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under Presidents George W. Bush andBarack Obama, and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He succeeded Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth28 November 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Our goal at DHS is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant,
received little or no assistance from the United States.
mapping the entire border to determine exactly what the flow is, where we need to put resources.
I think that that predication unhappily turned out to be correct and one of the things I said was we're racing the clock. Unfortunately, the hurricane beat us,
I think that was a bad idea, and I directed it not to happen again,
Last year, New York got $200 million. This year, we're going to give them $124 million under this particular program. But last year was an artificially elevated number to make up from the very low grant the year before.
I was very unhappy with the lack of situational awareness I had in the couple of days after Katrina. I never want to be in the position again where I don't have real eyes on the ground to tell me what is going on in no uncertain terms as opposed to waiting to get reports coming through the media or inconsistencies from the field.
I think there's a strong argument that it ought not to be located in downtown Washington because of the desire to have some distance, you know, between ourselves and some other buildings,
I think it would be hugely, hugely difficult to do this,
managers and supervisors found responsible for violating civil rights or whistleblower protection laws will be disciplined accordingly.
People have got to take some responsibility for preparing themselves, ... That means you get yourself three days' worth of food, three days' worth of water; you get yourself flashlights, batteries, either a hand-crank radio or a battery-powered radio, a first-aid kit precisely because you know it's going to take 48 to 72 hours to be able to fully service everyone.
State and local authorities have the principal, first-line-of-response obligation, with respect to a disaster of this kind, ... Obviously, the law recognizes they can't do it themselves.
My own view is this, I've got to get my own house in order, ... I am not here to judge others. I did not have a problem with state and local officials.
We need more than brute enforcement, ... We need a temporary worker program as well.