Katie Riesner EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Mass migrations arriving at the southwest border of the United States are increasingly overwhelming the U.S. government’s ability to respond. When these events overwhelm U.S. immigration authorities, they can exacerbate security vulnerabilities. For example, gang members, criminals, terrorists, and foreign fugitives can all exploit the porous southwest border, especially during a…
CHDS Theses: Executive Summaries
Putting the Public in Public Safety: Nudging a Safer Community
Paul Pazen EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This research paper, Putting the Public in Public Safety: Nudging a Safer Community, builds on existing nudge campaign research to identify and implement a local nudge campaign to assess nudge’s overall efficacy and practicality as an alternative means to increase public safety by decreasing preventable crimes. This thesis starts with a…
Law Enforcement Shootings in the United States: The Factors and Potential Solutions
Emmanuel Kwo EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Modern-day policing in the United States is a task undertaken by various agencies across the country. From the federal level down to the local level, more than 800,000 men and women make up the country’s sworn law enforcement agents.[1] When it comes to training these officers, there is no standardized training…
Protecting America’s High Ground. A Public–Private Response to Space Debris.
Christopher REpair EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Uncontrolled debris in orbit poses the greatest risk to U.S. satellites in orbit and the capabilities they provide. A sustained loss of services provided by satellite technology will have a significant negative impact on the nation’s homeland security. The areas impacted include communication, financial transactions, intelligence gathering, internet access, and weather…
The United States Coast Guard and Spontaneous Volunteers: Collaboration or Chaos during Disaster Response
JoshUA Gilbert EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Spontaneous volunteers who conducted search and rescue (SAR) in the aftermath of major hurricanes, such as Katrina in 2005, Harvey and Irma in 2017, and Florence and Michael in 2018, are changing the emergency management landscape because they self-organize and conduct independent SAR operations. Additionally, organized spontaneous volunteer (OSV) groups are…
Carrot or Stick—A Multiple Case Study of Anti-Corruption and Incentive-based Programs and Lessons Learned
Cesar Garcia EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provided the legislation to establish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which married all federal agencies involved in such security under one umbrella.[1] Various legacy immigration and customs agencies merged to create the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within this DHS umbrella. CBP’s mission…
Normalizing Cybersecurity: Improving Cyber Incident Response with the Incident Command System
Darin HansOn EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In February of 2018, the state of Colorado became the first state in the nation to issue an emergency declaration for a cyber attack after its Department of Transportation was struck with ransomware.[1] After early struggles responding to the incident, the Incident Command System (ICS) was implemented and a Unified Command…
Strategic Communications and the Department of Homeland Security: Immigration Policies, Mixed Messaging, and Information Fratricide
Jonathan Graham EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Many Americans disapproved of the immigration enforcement policies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during the Trump administration. This thesis begins by asking what can be learned about DHS’s communications strategy during controversial policy rollouts and whether a negative perception of those policies can be improved. Previous research has not…
The Crisis of Legitimacy after Police-Related Civilian Deaths: Applying the Cynefin Framework to Legitimacy-Developing Policies
Stephen Espinoza EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Police-related civilian deaths, either by use of force or occurring during law enforcement custody, pose one of the central challenges to police legitimacy.[1] For example, protesters marched against police funding, sporadic episodes of civil disorder erupted, and police policy reviews commenced in the wake of the May 2020 death of George…
Security Cooperation with Cuba: The Impact of Normalization on the Coast Guard’s Relationship with the
Derek Cromwell EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Despite the ups and downs in the political and diplomatic relationship, bilateral cooperation between the United States and Cuba still needs to continue, if only because the countries are so close geographically and have many security and other interests in common. Enduring relationships, such as those between the Coast Guard and…