As federal agencies go, this one remains in its infancy, having been established by an act of Congress in 2002 in direct response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The Department of Homeland Security is still growing, having had almost as many agencies added to its roster as were part of it when it was established. Although all of the agencies contained in the department could be considered law enforcement bureaus, the three primary concerns for those interested in law enforcement positions as defined in Chapter 1 are the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the U.S. Secret Service.

U.S. Coast Guard

Though the United States Coast Guard also provides air and sea rescue of boaters and sailors, the law enforcement and security aspects of the job make every member of the service fall within our definition of law enforcement officer. The U.S. Coast Guard seizes, on average, almost $10 million worth of drug contraband every day.

The Coast Guard is now formally the fifth branch of the military, originally founded in 1790. Prior to the move to the Department of Homeland Security, it was part of the Department of Transportation in peacetime, and assigned to the Department of Defense in war time. During peacetime it was considered more a civil agency, as opposed to a military one, because it carried out a non-military mission. Since September 11, 2001, the mission of the Coast Guard has been refined with an emphasis toward tightening the security of the nation's waterways and enforcing the territorial limits.

Throughout most of the first two centuries of its existence, the United States of America recognized and enforced only a twelve-mile territorial limit—roughly the distance that can be seen to the horizon while standing at the water's edge. Only recently has the United States expanded those limits to the universally accepted two-hundred-mile limit that other nations have always maintained. This expansion of territorial limits has required an enormous increase in coastal resources in order to provide proper security patrols.

The U.S. Coast Guard is a relatively small organization, with 38,000 active-duty, 8,000 reserve-duty, and 35,000 auxiliary personnel. Military standards are maintained with respect to pay and benefits (including the GI bill), and members are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the same as the other four branches of the service. Boot camp lasts eight weeks and is done at Cape May, New Jersey. Just the same as the many police academies throughout the country, there exist physical standards that must be achieved in order to graduate, including a required number of pushups and sit-ups, running a specified distance within a certain time frame, and swimming.

The U.S. Department of Defense, which encompasses four of the five branches of the military—Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marines—was originally two departments, the Navy Department and the War Department. The Marines were part of the Navy Department and the Air Force was originally a segment of the Army, known as the U.S. Army Air Corps. The Department of Defense (DOD) was created to bring the four primary military organizations under a single leadership. The Coast Guard was traditionally transferred to DOD only in time of war, in order to coordinate all defense efforts.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

This hybrid organization is the result of combining the former U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. Immigration Service, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. With a combined force of 41,000 people, the mission of this agency is to control and protect the borders of the United States at and between ports of entry.

The CBP maintains watch over air passengers entering the United States and does constant assessments using advanced technology that assist in identifying potential threats. It has partnered with other countries in expanding the Zone of Security beyond the physical borders of the United States, in order to implement preventive measures without restricting the flow of trade and travel. Other nations have begun prescreening containerized cargo that could pose a risk not only to an intended U.S. target, but also to the port of departure.

With the expansion of investigative tools and privileges afforded the executive branch of government with the adoption of the Patriot Act, Customs and Border Protection agents have the ability to utilize a wide array of surveillance technologies in their jobs. Remote video surveillance systems are also used in areas where clandestine border crossings occur regularly. On a typical day, the CBP processes over one million passengers, almost 65,000 cargo containers, 2,600 aircraft, and more than one-third of a million individual vehicles. Customs and Border Protection agents have thousands of vehicles, eighty-five aircraft, seventy-five watercraft, horses, ATVs, and 1,200 canines at their disposal. The agency makes well over 3,000 arrests each day on a variety of charges including illegal entry and drug possession. It seizes thousands of pounds of illegal drugs, millions of dollars in currency, firearms, vehicles, and merchandise, and keeps prohibited plants and animals offshore every day.

U.S. Secret Service

The U.S. Secret Service, currently assigned to the Homeland Security Department, originated in 1865 as part of the U.S. Treasury Department in order to investigate counterfeiting of U.S. currency in the post–Civil War years. With the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, the Secret Service was given the additional task of protecting the president.

The Secret Service has two parts to its mission: security of the nation's financial system, and protection of the president, vice president, and other designated persons. To accomplish this mission, agents assigned to both tasks must be adept at investigation, physically fit, and extremely capable with firearms. The United States Secret Service has a special rifle made exclusively for use by its sniper teams, known euphemistically as J.A.R., or “just another rifle.”It is believed to be at least a fifty caliber rifle, with an effective range of almost three miles, although only the Secret Service knows for sure, due to the classified nature of the information.

Preliminary training is done in two stages. After weathering the hiring process, new agents attend a nine-week course in criminal investigation in Georgia. Those who pass this intensive program move on to an eleven-week training course held at the Secret Service Training Academy in Beltsville, Maryland.

The eleven-week curriculum at Beltsville is packed with some of the most intellectually intense and physically demanding training in all of law enforcement, and is geared to prepare agents for the many unusual rigors of the job. Secret Service also maintains one of the most stringent in-service retraining programs, with courses and refreshers held throughout an agent's career.

There are two divisions within the protection service—uniformed agents and those without uniforms. The uniformed personnel handle the physical security of both the White House and the Naval Observatory (the residence of the vice president), and there is a contingent of uniformed officers that travels with the presidential party to help establish the protective perimeter around the president at events that are attended by large crowds.