Kelly says his Top Priorities include transnational organized crime, Border Security, homegrown terrorism, and cyber security. He spoke yesterday at George Washington university. It is about one hour. [applause] mr. Knapp good morning. This will be the first public address of its kind that secretary kelly will have given since his swearingin. We are honored to have chosen venue for thethis speech. We are ranked as the most politically engaged body in the nation. Our students are actively involved in dialogue, and i am delighted a number of our students are able to be here today. We talk about giving our students a front row seat to history, and this is a good example of what that means. We are glad to be supporting veterans actively for a number of years now. Currently we have 1800 veterans and their dependents being educated here. On the topic of todays conversation, i want to talk about our longterm involvement in Homeland Security issues. All four of secretary kellys predecessors have visited our campus as he is doing today, and the speeches from people like secretary kelly highlight the work we do in this field. The faculty at George Washington has been working since before september 11 attacks in 2001. We had unique efforts in homeland, cyber, and counterterrorism. Key leaders of those efforts are with us today. I want to mention the director of the George Washington center for cyber and Homeland Security. I would like to invite Frank Cilluffo to introduce secretary kelly. Things again for being here. Please enjoy. I know you will benefit from his presentation. Thank you. [applause] mr. Cilluffo thank you, and before i introduce secretary kelly, let me thank steve for his 10 years as president of George Washington university. He has led it ably and has been an incredible proponent of research, academia, and the marriage between policy and research and academia. Thank you. He will be stepping down at the end of july. It is a distinct privilege to be able to host general kelly today. I see so many leaders in the Homeland Security space in the audience here, and as the president had mentioned, we had the opportunity to host all of his predecessors, but in this case, we have the first secretary with operational experience. All i have to say is he is a marine. What else do you need . He served ably for 40plus years in our armed services. He enlisted in 1970, went back to get his degree, and came back to the marines as an officer. He has moved up the ranks and served in so many various leadership roles, including in command roles and staff roles, as well as educational roles. So really excited to hear from general kelly. He is a patriots fan. I will not hold that against him. I am a red sox fan. Im thrilled to have general kelly join us today. Thrilled to have the opportunity to be able to hear more in terms of the Strategic Vision of the department and the priorities he is setting for the men and women who are charged with the awesome responsibilities of protecting our homeland day in and day out. I think it is important to recognize and provide context around these issues, and ultimately we are a university, but we want to make sure we are empowering and arming our men and women with knowledge to be able to fulfill their objective. Really is a privilege to have the opportunity to host general kelly today. He is the fifth secretary of the department of Homeland Security, oversees a workforce ,000 plus people. He is here to recognize that Homeland Security starts overseas. We have a number of executives, including ambassadors. I see japanese executives, belgian ambassadors, who have and many others who have been able to join us today. Secretary kelly, the floor is yours. I look forward to hearing your comments and then engaging in a q a. Thank you. [applause] secretary kelly thanks very much, frank, and thanks for the kind words, president knapp and to g. W. For hosting this event today. When i retired, my biggest fear at the time was to be offered another fulltime job, particularly in the government. I certainly did not want to go up and down the beltway like i did so many other times. Did not like the bureaucracy, but here i am today. When i make my way up 95, the first thing i do is read the clips that are taken out of various publications around the country, and i read about frankly what i do or what i have done, what i have said, and i read about my people. It is one of the first things i do every day, and the other one is to read the daily intelligence briefing. I read about my people, my institution, and above me, occasionally, but more importantly, i read in the intel what we are actually accomplishing during the course of the day. Theres a big gap between the two, what is reported in the press and the media, and i mean no disrespect. And what we actually do. I will start with something that straightto set that this morning. I will start with something that does not make headlines. I could not be prouder to serve alongside the men and women of Homeland Security, and we as a nation owe them a debt of gratitude for taking on some of the toughest and most important jobs in our country. When you are having your morning coffee, the coast guard is typically pulling a fisherman out of his boat, capsized in pretty heavy seas, and while you are deciding what you want for lunch, the federal Law EnforcementTraining Center is teaching Law Enforcement officers how to respond to an active shooter. When you are scrolling through facebook, our site is director is hoping local bomb squad defeat ieds. When you are zoning out on your commute home, professionals and investigators are closing in on a dangerous child predator. While you are Binge Watching mad men on netflix, tsa is stopping an actual madman from boarding a flight to disney world. While some members of congress or state and local politicians or members of advocacy groups read or listen to partial and oftentimes inaccurate media reporting on some alleged incident at an airport, in a courthouse, or at a Border Crossing and assume the men and women at dhs are intentionally abusing innocent individuals while they break or ignore or that is to say while my people break and ignore u. S. Law they make the assumption that my people are doing it wrong, as opposed to making the assumption that my people are doing it right, working within the law, based on their training and just who they are as americans. That is the ordinary day and one that does not make the paper. Every day in a million different ways, dhs employees are making our country more secure,. They are standing guard against all the hazards we face, as a nation. They are enforcing the Laws Congress has passed because we are lucky enough to live in a nation of laws. We do our job so you can live a and your families can live a peaceful life, a safe life, in a free country. Make no mistake, we are in fact a nation under attack. Were under attack from criminals who think their greed justifies raping young girls at knife point, dealing poison to our youth, or killing some of us for fun. We are under attack from people who hate us, hate our freedoms, laws, values, hate the way we simply live our lives. We are under attack from failed terrorists,r smugglers, and radicals. Were under attack every single day. The threats against us are relentless. When people think about dhs, they think about how we respond to terrorism, and that is fair. This is our Foundation Given our origin story, and critical to what we do. But our jobs are to secure the nation from the threats we face from all hazards. But one of the greatest hazard s is from transnational criminal organizations. Like terrorists, tcos inflict unthinkable brutality and regularly behead their victims. They intimidate, kidnap, and torture those who try to bring law and order. They buy, sell, and exploit desperate people for their own purposes. They destroy their own communities and bring great shame on their countries of origin. They are utterly without laws, conscience, or respect for human life. They take the form of drug cartels or international gangs. Like ms13. They share their business dealings and violent practices. Their sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders including , including human beings. We have set out to stop that movement to the greatest degree that we can. Human smugglers take thousands of dollars from desperate people, people trying to escape a lack of Economic Opportunity in many cases and send them on a course north on a network that rivals dantes journey into hell. Along the way, these desperate people are often raped, starved, beaten, and robbed of what possessions they brought with them. The smugglers make few guarantees. They offer no refunds. Special interest aliens. Not every person moving along these networks is an economic refugee or trying to escape poverty. We face real threats from socalled special interest aliens that move at great expense from vast distances from outside the western sphere hemisphere into the United States. The specl terrorism is prevalent are , hostile to the united takes. These individuals pay tcos huge sums of money to transport them from the middle east, through t or asia through south and Central America. We do not get to vet them. Here and why they are coming. They slip into our country and unnoticed, living among us. We are blind to what they are capable of. The damage tcos do is only part of the story. Is also thait is also that theyt tonnage is of cocaine and heroin, methamphetamines. They move these tonnages across our borders to feed the recreational and addictive u. S. Demand. U. S. Customs and Border Protections, u. S. Immigrations, ice, and homeland investigations are witness to the vast quantity of drugs that are trafficked into the United States every day with devastating consequences. In 2015, which is the most recent data we have, over 52,000 deaths from these drugs in the United States caused by these overdoses. It is the highest number of drugrelated deaths our country has ever seen. It is more deaths than the peak of the eighth epidemic in 1995. In a single year we have lost as Many Americans to drug overdoses as we lost in the entire world war i. Its almost as many as we lost in the 12 years of fighting in vietnam. That is just overdosed deaths. That number says nothing about the longterm health damaged our to our citizens who survived. To say nothing about the human misery, the families and violence inherent in the illegal drug enterprise. Let me be clear about marijuana. It is a potentially dangerous gateway drug that frequently leads to the use of harder drugs. Additionally science tells us it , is not only psychologically addictive, but can have profound negative impacts on the still developing minds of teens and people up to their mid20s. Beyond that, however, its use and possession is against federal law. We in dhs along with the rest of the federal government are sworn to uphold all the laws that are on the books. Dhs personnel will continue to investigate marijuana illegal pathways along the network into the United States. We will arrest those involved in the drug trade according to federal law. Customs professionals who continue to search for marijuana at sea, air, and land ports of entry and will take appropriate simila similar appropriate acti. When marijuana is found at airports, tsa personnel will take action. Ice will continue to use marijuana distribution and convictions as essential elements as they build their deportation, removal, apprehension packages for targeted operations against illegal aliens. Living in the United States a. They have done this in the past, are doing it today, and will continue in the future. Now about terrorism. Tcos have a devastating effect on our homeland. Yet the other aspect of the threat is terrorism. For a brief moment after the 9 11 attacks, we came together as a country and stood shoulder to shoulder against this horrible threat. But the years have passed and we have grown accustomed to it and now question all the security, all of the issues that we have put in place to secure the nation. It is a little bit of an inconvenience at an airport or a little bit of an inconvenience as you pass on to an airplane. The threat to our nation, our american way of life, has not diminished. In fact the threat has , metastasized and decentralized, and the risk is threatening us today in a way that is worse than we experienced 16 years ago. As i speak these words, the fbi has opened terrorism investigations in all of our 50 states. Since 2013, there have been 37 isislinked plots to attack our country. This is bad news, but it gets worse. Experts estimate 10,000 citizens of europe have joined the caliphate fight in syria and in iraq. Thousands more from nations in asia, africa, the western hemisphere have also joined that fight. They have learned how to make ieds, employed drones to drop ordinance, and acquired experience on the battlefield. That they are increasingly beginning to bring home. As a coalition, we are against what is best described against conventional formations in the caliphate. The expectation that many of these holy warriors will survive, come back to their home countries, where they will wreak havoc in europe, asia, and the the caribbean, and the United States. Because many are citizens of countries in our visa waiver programs, they can easily travel to the United States, which makes us and continues to make us a prime terrorist target. Homegrown terrorism is a very, very difficult challenge. Few of the challenges we face from a terrorism point of view are even close to as difficult. Over the past few years we have , seen an unprecedented spike in homegrown terrorism. In the past 12 months, to have alone, there have been 36 homegrown terrorist cases opened. These are the cases we know about. Homegrown terrorism is difficult to predict, detect, and almost certainly almost impossible to control. What is feeding the violence . Typically with these the feeds the violence is the internet. From anywhere across the world, terrorist organizations are sharing hateful propaganda with impressionable people. They published revolting howto manuals, teaching their followers how to build bombs and kill innocent people. They trade dehumanizing pictures of people being thrown from buildings, raped, victims being stoned to death. If you are a terrorist within in an internet connection, you can like they won on your ever present cell phone you can , recruit soldiers, you can and upload a video calling for a jihad with a few clicks. Thanks to improving encryption devices and secure communication techniques, these individuals are becoming harder and harder, and i predict eventually impossible to detect. Until community leaders, social service providers, teachers, Law Enforcement, are are more aware of their options to prevent that message from taking hold, our youth are prey to these predators. We are under attack from terrorism within and outside of our borders. These men and women are without conscience, and they are without operate without rules. They despise the United States because we are a nation of rights, of laws, and of freedoms. They have a single mission, and that is our destruction. I tell you without exaggeration, they try to carry out this mission each and every day, each and every night. They are relentless. They cannot be stopped. Unless men and women like those that serve at dhs, military, and Law Enforcement are ever vigilant and they are. ,ciber for a minute. Not just bombs and guns are threats against us. Another entire type of conflict is taking place in the computer networks. We are under constant attack by a wide range of adversaries with an even wider range of capabilities in this realm. There are nationstate actors with extremely sophisticated tools. There are global criminal organizations that operate like a legitimate business right down to Customer Service support. There are even lone wolves that buy malware on the internet. Their motivations verary. Sometimes they just want to create havoc. They target our government networks, Critical Infrastructure systems throughout america, which is being bombarded on an hourly basis. Water treatment plants, electrical grid, financial sectors, and everything in between. These attackers steal intellectual property, personal data, and health information. They are thieves, vandals, saboteurs, and enemies of enemies of democracy, and potentially much more. We live in an interconnected world. That is not a trend. That is a reality. We rely on technology for everything from our coffeemakers to running global corporations. But this reliance and perhaps overreliance brings risks. What would happen to our country if the stock market did not could not process trades . What would happen to the Transportation System if the navigation satellites suddenly went dead . What would happen if a major American City lost power . Cyber threats present a tremendous danger to our way of life. The consequences of these digital threats are no less significant then threats from the physical world. We continue the fight that many people cannot imagine. It is a big job, this department. We are up against criminal organizations, cyber attacks, terrorists assassins, pandemics, hurricanes, and oil spills. The danger is real, but so is our dedication, professionalism, and expertise. These risks, these hazards, that is why we do what we do. 16 times in my life i have raised my right hand and swore before my god that i would support and defend the constitution of the United States. Our nation is unique in that we swear our allegiance to a piece of paper, a constitution, to law, not to a king, a president , to a party, but the supreme law of the land. We vowed to uphold the law and to operate within it. We have a sacred duty, and that is the continuation of the United States as we know it. To protect our way of life and the Exceptional People we are. Every day we take a stand against the forces that endeavor to take that exceptionalism away from us. I am proud to say with help from our International Interagency and private sector partners, state and local partners, we are standing strong and winning the battle. We must win the battle 100 of the time every day. Our adversaries only need to have to get one punch in occasionally to make a point. Back to talking about crime. No better argument for securing our borders than the transnational terminal organizations we face. Since the first week of the new President Trumps administration, we have been securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. Not only is this our right, it right as a sovereign nation it is our responsibility to , ensure the safety of the american people. People who illegally cross our borders do not respect the laws of our nation. We want to get the lawbreakers off our streets and out of our country for the good of our communities. Being serious about our borders and our laws is not just good for the american people, but it will also save lives. In 2016, customs and Border Protection save nearly 4000 neardeath individuals who found themselves abandoned by the coyotes and traffickers in the desert and nearly died. 4000 saved. Much has been made up our of our efforts to discourage women from endangering themselves and their children at the hands of these human smugglers. It is working. While more than 16,000 family units were apprehended in at the border in december, only 1100 were apprehended in march. This is a phenomenal drop in movement. Every one of them that did not come did not subject themselves to the dangers of the network and the abuse of that network. Fewer people are crossing the border illegally means fewer deaths in the desert fewer , people submitting themselves to that terrible network experience. Theres nothing more and i know i speak for the attorney general nothing more that we would like to do than put these human smugglers out of business, and we would do anything, our departments, to do just that within the law. The drop in illegal immigration is really remarkable. The dramatic reduction is evident across the southwest border. March apprehensions were 30 lower than february and 64 lower than this time last year. These numbers are lower because we are serious about Border Security and enforcing our immigration laws. We have ended catch and release and also focused on prosecuting and convicting the traffickers or the coyotes themselves. We have not done that before. We have significantly increased detainers for deportation and have arrested more criminal aliens. We will continue to expand the our approach to include the prosecution of anyone, including family members that pay the traffickers, especially when they pay the traffickers to move children up that terrible network. Our dhs personnel will enforce these laws, primarily ice, know they have a job to do and are trained to do it. These dedicated and selfless men and women have the resources and knowledge, training, and resources and they know they , have an administration and a department and a secretary that have their back. While we have seen a drop in human smuggling, agencies across our department continue to seize vast amounts of dangerous drugs. At the midpoint of this fiscal year, the coast guard is combating a sharp uptick in cocaine flow and has removed already removed nearly 243,000 pounds that were headed to the United States. Cdp has reported a 39 increase in cocaine seizures, 43,000 for a total of over 43,000 pounds. They have seen an increase in heroin and methamphetamine seizures, and it is only halfway through the fiscal year. When you consider that cvp seized 4000 tons of drugs every day in 2016, you can see we have our nation has a serious drug problem. We need a comprehensive drug policy, and we need a commitment to reduce drug demand in the United States, and i do not mean arresting our way out of this. I mean it is a comprehensive plan to reduce demand. A focused effort that not only employs the full measure of the federal, state, and local governments, but also hollywood, professional sports figures and teams, high school coaches, boy and girl scouts leaders, as well and Community Activists as well as Law Enforcement in their chasing the dragon program. As well as priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams. Finally, ladies and gentlemen, it all begins at home. Parents have got to be more engaged in what their children are doing, whether on the it is on the internet or taking drugs, experimenting with drugs. The time is now because this president has recognized this problem, and he has signed an executive order establishing the president s commission on combating drug addiction, of which i am part. One of the things were doing, certainly trying to do, and i will never point fingers at the source, but we have deterred successfully a huge amount of immigration illegal immigration coming up from the Central American countries. For the most part they leave because there is no Economic Opportunity for them. We are trying to get at that issue as well. We, along with the state department and others are , hosting a conference in miami in june. We will have mexico helping as cohosts. We will have all four Central American countries in question attend. The Interamerican Development bank is fully onboard. We will have European Partners coming in, canadians, and as well as panama and costa rica will come in as observers. What we will try to do is have a conference to stimulate Economic Development and investment in the three countries, honduras, el salvador, and guatemala. In that way, try to create an environment where people will stay there, where their culture families are, where their culture is, where their churches are, and not take that trip up into the United States. They lack the Economic Opportunity. That is why the majority of them leave. Cohosting with mexico, we will try to make a difference. We are not just trying to keep them away, we are trying to give them a reason to stay home. This conference on Central American prosperity is designed and security is designed to help these countries in a way that we have never attempted before. As i mentioned a number of times, we have tried to push the borders of the United States as far away as possible, and we do this in various ways, partnering with countries like colombia and mexico and the caribbean nations. Using an incredibly capable National Security cutters of the United States coast guard that do unbelievable work in the caribbean and the eastern pacific in interdicting loads of cocaine and other drugs by the ton, not by the gram. Not by the kilo, but by the ton. We must use our relative geographic distance to our advantage. We have got to stop criminals and terrorists from threatening our homeland. We need to know who is coming into our country, where they have been, why they are coming here before they have arrived at our doorstep. The first step is improving our vetting processes, increasing the reliability of those our vetting procedures overseas. We will use all the tools we have available, social media, new technology, biometrics, more investigators, and topnotch intelligence. Last year, dhs and our analysis folks developed 900 new intel leads. 500 of those were not previously known. These were bad people that we identified and prevented from coming to our country. Healthrke Intelligence Community and dhs personnel keep people with terrorist ties out of the United States. We have operationalized intelligence. Everything we do is based on the intelligence we gain from a myriad of sources, not just what we gain, but intelligence provided to us from the intelligence committee. We have successfully been able to stop much terrorism from coming to our shores. The same applies to what we do in the world of cyber, partnering with not only other aspects of the u. S. Government and other agencies of the United States government, but in a big way the commercial and Even International partners to help us prevent this Destructive Force as well. Employee morale, for too long the men and women in my department have been pawns, have political pawns, have been asked to do more with less and less. Similar to the treatment of Law Enforcement over the past two few years, they are often ridiculed by Public Officials and convicted in the court of Public Opinion on unfounded allegations testified to by street lawyers and street spokespersons. If lawmakers do not like the laws we enforce, we are charged to enforce, that we are sworn to enforce, then they should have the courage and skill to change those laws. Otherwise, they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines. [laughter] [applause] secretary kelly my people have been discouraged from doing their jobs for nearly a decade, disabled by pointless bureaucracy and political meddling, and suffered disrespect and contempt by Public Officials who have no idea what it means to serve. During my confirmation process and hearings, members of the congress, press, and officials asked me about the morale problems the department has experienced over the last few years. My response has simply been when you discourage, disable, unjustly criticize and default to believing the initial reports as opposed to defaulting to believing the stories told by my professionals, when you do all of those things and show disrespect to the individual who is risking his or her life to defend the country, when you do those things, what do you expect . All of this stopped on january 20. It stopped with President Trump and with me. My people, the men and women of this department do a difficult and at times impossible job in the service to the american people. They deserve our nations thanks and respect. They deserve to be proud of the jobs they do. We are moving in the right direction. Why . Because the best way to improve morale is to let employees do the job they were hired to do and trained to do and recognize them for doing those jobs. We will never apologize for enforcing and upholding thlaws of this country. We will never apologize for carrying out our mission. We will never apologize for making our country more secure. We ask nothing more than respect and support. We do not do this for the thankyous. We seldom get thankyous. We do this to keep america strong, secure, and free. We live in a dangerous world. Those dangers aree increasing. Not decreasing. And changing speed and direction every single day. Every day, we are vigilant. Every day, we are prepared. Every day, we do our jobs. With that, i will close and say thank you for the opportunity for g. W. For me to come up here and make these comments, but i in particular i want to thank , the men and women, nearly a quarter of a million, who do a dhs every single day. They are all important, and you are all heroic, great public servants, and keep on charging. Thanks very much. [applause] mr. Cilluffo let me thank you for a phenomenal Tour De Force covering a whole range of issues that the department grapples with day in and day out. Thank you, mr. Secretary. We have a couple of your predecessors here. I see secretary chertoff here. In the front. I see jane loot sitting next to judge webster. We have got our newly nominated newly confirmed deputy secretary. Congratulations. One of our senior fellows. We have a great group of people here today. I thought i would start with a question that cuts at the actual title of todays event. The home and away. You had mentioned in particular discussing cyber, the interconnected risk that we face today. Can you expound or expand upon a little bit upon the home and away game, and obviously dhs has a Significant International role. But how do you see that coming together, especially since before you came to the department, you were the Combatant Commander of the Southern Command, which obviously shares a number of those risks . How do you see the military component interact with dhs and more generally the risk that we are facing today . Secretary kelly i would offer a story. A very good friend of mine, jeh johnson, and i was in Southern Command, and that command is responsible for interacting with our great partners in Central America, south america, the caribbean. It was during the big uac crisis. The unaccompanied child crisis. I think it was 2014. Jeh had just taken the job. He called an he called me up on. I had been at my job for a period of time. He said, help, you have got to help me out here. What can you do to help me stop this illegal immigration and all of the drugs coming into the United States . I said, jeh, where are you . He said, im in texas. I am on the rio grande border. I thought, which way are you looking . He said, looking south. I said, why dont you meet me on in guatemala on a river and look , and you and i can look north and you will see a different perspective as to the problem of drugs, violence, and illegal immigration. To his great credit, he did that the next week, and we stood on the river between mexico and guatemala. That began a relationship with jeh and i. We talked almost every week on issues, sometimes more than that. By contrast, with the exception of running detention ops at guantanamo bay, very proud of that mission that i accomplished with my people. Very proud of the men and women that do a great job down there everything will day and in guantanamo. With the exception of guantanamo, 39 months, never had a conversation with the secretary of defense about southcom. I had weekly conversations with , sometimes more often than that, with the secretary of Homeland Security. The reality in that part of the world, where there is little very little possibility for state on state violence, but a huge partnering responsibility, and very proud to say that while i was there, my predecessor and who is there now carries on the tradition of partnering. Now the commander of Southern Command and i speak frequently. Again the same relationship. , mr. Cilluffo when we were in the green room prior to your remarks, we chatted about the terrorist Screening Center and some of the capabilities being brought there. In your remarks you talked about operationalizing intelligence. Can you expand in terms of how these pieces are coming together . Are we fully utilizing the capabilities that are there . Obviously, the intent is to get always to get there before the bomb goes off, and intelligence is the lifeblood for our campaign against transnational terrorists or transnational criminal enterprises. What sort of steps do you see from a terror travel perspective . And speaking about our partners in mexico, it started a little bumpy. Can you give us a sense of where that u. S. Mexico is right now . Secretary kelly let me start with the mexican relationship. Mexico was not part of the Southern Command set of partners that i interacted with. However i interacted with their , military frequently, conferences, things like that. I have friends in the senior levels of the mexican military. I knew a number of ministers within the mexican government. So when i took this job, i made it a point to get to Central America then mexico very quickly and maintain the tremendous relationship we have. They are great partners along the southwest border. They are great partners in counterterrorism. They are great partners in working with our Law Enforcement, intelligence agencies, sharing information. We help them. They help us. Last year they stopped, apprehended, or detained and sent back to their home countries 160,000 Central Americans before they got beyond 100 miles from the guatemalan border. They are great partners. I think that continues. I do not think i am increasingly close to the mexico new mexico ambassador to the United States. I met him in mexico city with when i was down there with Rex Tillerson. I hope there is not a mexican official that does not drop by. We are in good shape, in good coordination, in Good Partnership with the mexican government, mexican military, Law Enforcement. They are suffering from our drug demand. We have to recognize that. On the issue of terrorism, i am comforted by what i now know are the capabilities of the department of Homeland Security. I have been around a long time, and in a fair number of fights, but i take comfort in the fact that this organization is so effective in what it does in terms of intel sharing, taking advantage of databases, as well as producing our own intel. I would tell you that when a person of interest, someone on a terrorist list, buys a plane ticket in tokyo and is flying to abu dhabi, we know about it. He is not even coming here. The information sharing with the our European Partners, everybody, it is really comforting. I would close on the topic by saying, when you hear a report of a family, an individual, whatever at an airport being put into secondary screening or being refused entry into the United States, believe me, it is not because of their skin color, not because of the part of the world they come from, not because of their religion, it is because someone, something, some indicator, some tipper brought a professional there to make a decision to put them into additional screening. It may have been something they said, their story did not work out, that may have been something on their cell phone that brought the attention. There is always more to the story. I cannot tell you the number of phone calls i get from members of congress telling me about how we are refusing someones entry at lax or jfk because they are muslim or arab. It is absolutely not true. We do it for a reason. You should applaud those men and women for doing what they do. Mr. Cilluffo you mentioned transnational criminal organizations, which i might note has been elevated in your leadership at the department of Homeland Security, and i think rightfully so. You have mentioned terrorist organizations, foreign as well as homegrown extremists. You mentioned cyber. Not that that is a short list. It is a very, very big list. Anything that is missing on that list that keeps you up at night . Secretary kelly the only thing that would keep me up at night when i was at southcom, i talked about this a lot. Oftentimes told not to talk about it, but i did anyway. This issue of the network that we have already slowed down in 90 days. A 70 reduction in Illegal Migrants into the United States. And we have not done anything. We have done things, but have not done the big things yet. But partnering with doj, we have made a difference. This network is so welldeveloped and so efficient, it can move anything. It moves hundreds of tons of Illegal Drugs into the United States every year. Until recently, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, and that includes special interest aliens in unlimited numbers, but it could move other things, too. I was oftentimes in the last administration told that the cartels would not allow this incredible network, so efficient, so well developed, that the cartels would never let anyone in who is carrying a pandemic type of weapon, a biological weapon, a dirty bomb, or a nuclear weapon, because it would be bad for business. In a sense, they are right, but i will always point out that a lot of subcontractors in this network, and these guys do not check passports. They do not do explosive residue testing. They do not look in anyones bag. If you got the money, you are in. I said it a lot back then. I am trying to do something about it now. When there is another terrorist attack in our country, if it comes from outside the country, up until 90 days ago, that i would say that individual gets s into the United States through the southwest border. I am staying up late at night to try to prevent that from happening. That is what keeps me awake at night. Mr. Cilluffo the reality is smuggling is smuggling is smuggling. The old joke, if you want to smuggle in a nuclear weapon, wrap it in a bale of marijuana. Terrorists are engaged in criminal operations. On top of whatever else it is, it is a criminal operation. Anything from the counterterrorism environment that you think can be brought to bear . Because when you think of criminal enterprises, and i think you referred to them as dark networks, which they are, is there anything there to understand the business that you think we ought to be bringing to bear . In the post9 11 environment, so much in the terror finance counterterrorism is there anything unique there that can be brought secretary kelly a few years ago, a good friend of mine, but a phenomenal gunfighter, warrior, seal, he and i collaborated when he has special Operations Command and i had command in miami on drilling down hard on how terrorists in interact with criminal organizations. Told repeatedly to let it go, it that it was not a military issue. Consequently, do not get involved in it. But what we learned and what we are learning more and more is the nexus touching between criminal networks and terrorist networks. We know that the Money Laundering of massive amounts of profit from the u. S. Drug demand there are terrorist organizations that make money from that moneylaundering process. We know that when cocaine moves into magreb, they allow it to terrorist organizations allow it to pass into europe. It is an incredibly lucrative way to raise money. Theyre not doing it in huge amounts yet, i dont believe, but it would be the next step. The nexus between criminal and terrorist networks is real, and i predict will get more sophisticated. Mr. Cilluffo and it takes networks to defeat networks. Pulling all the pieces together there. Lets turn to the cyber set of issues a little bit. So when you start looking at the mass and vast responsibility to protect all of our Critical Infrastructures, if everything is critical, nothing is critical. So where would you see and i am not suggesting that dhs has designated 17 infrastructures to be critical, and they are but when you start looking at limited resources, unlimited risk, where are you going to prioritize your resources . And anything from where you see nppd going and some of the good congressional activity, whether mpd should be reauthorized in different kinds of ways . Secretary kelly the department is tasked for protecting the. Gov nets, and we do that. Not perfectly, but we do that, and we expend a great time of energy and attention to that. The other aspect is to partner to the greatest degree possible with commercial concerns. I was just out in seattle, met with the leadership of microsoft. They are very interested in partnering as we are. It is something that President Trump has taken on and is very involved ind very outreaching. The government cannot do it by itself. Probably could do it less capably if it did not employ could not do it as well if it did not have these partnerships with the commercial realm that i think should get better and better. It is nonstop, and President Trump has taken that oinn and is on and is organizing a Commission Type of thing to look at it. I am really impressed with the interest by the United States congress. A congressman from texas, for example, he and his staff are extremely knowledgeable, very engaged. As is other aspects of congress. But i think it is a whole of government thing, and the way the president is going, it will be a whole of government and the private realm as well. You cannot protect everything. Just before jeh left, he put the electoral system under Critical Infrastructure. That is controversial. I have tried to explain to people why he did it and what it means. It is another thing that we are from the federal government, we are here to help. When i say that, most people head for the door. They should. We are here to partner. Mr. Cilluffo any news from the executive order . Secretary kelly standing by with bated breath. Cant wait. Mr. Cilluffo and another question along the lines of the budget, and you rightfully said the department is being tasked with more and more and arguably getting fewer and fewer resources to be able to deliver on that vast mission. Where do you see things standing there . How do you see that playing out . Any concerns . Secretary kelly always concerns. You never have enough money. One of the things el aine will do is an efficiency thing. We will look at what jeh started, and i will continue on steroids, and that is a unity effort to streamline to see where we duplicate efforts, acquisition, whatever. It is a maze in terms of different pay scales, processes. Elaine is going to fix that in six months. [laughter] in the world we live today, there was always through the cold war and until recently there was always this , defense and nondefense spending, defense and nondefense professionals. The world we live in today, the away game, the department of defense, cia, nsa has to meld with the home game which is dhs. In terms of going forward, we have to think in terms of security and nonsecurity as opposed to simply defense and over there. One of the things, we just had a great conference at the special Operations Command last week, and tony thomas and i were there and thinking in terms of as the caliphate is broken up and we are having Great Success in iraq and syria doing that, as that caliphate breaks up, legal effort metastasizes more, decentralizes more, and our country from a smaller point of view but from a domestic point of view is at greater risk. The idea security as nonsecurity as opposed over there and back here. We have to do that. We do that. Think about the coast guard. The coast guard today does a phenomenal number of missions. It is taking hundreds of tons of drugs out of the caribbean flow, and it is wrapping itself around the arctic, not to mention just saving boaters lives on the off of florida or on the great lakes. Phenomenal. But everything they do has to do with the security of our nation. Do not look at them as part of the security equation makes no sense. I would say that we should think in terms of security, not defense. Mr. Cilluffo a few last questions. You mentioned syria. In your role as secretary of the department of Homeland Security, were you weighing in on some of the decisions, at least from what the implications could be to defend the homeland in terms of ramping up, which we need to obviously accelerate the away game, but what sort of implications does that have from a Homeland Security perspective, and did you weigh in on some of the decisions . Secretary kelly i was involved as a member of the cabinet in and as a member of the National Security part of the cabinet in the discussions in the situation room with the president. I do not think he would mind me saying this, he was open to anyone at the table talking, giving their ideas. Clearly you had someone like jim , mattis, Rex Tillerson and , myself and others. ,it was a giveandtake. I do not think he would mind me saying this, he made exactly the right decision. Going forward from syria, who knows where that will end . We had some opportunities in the past we never seized. Going forward the one thing that concernsncern me and our european allies is as the caliphate goes away, and we are already seeing large numbers of the fighters go home because they are from europe, their they are passport holders, born and raised in many cases in europe. As they go into europe, back to continent they didnt know they left two or three years to fight, most of those countries are visa waiver countries could we have to start looking very hard at that program, not eliminating the and not excessive, but look very hard at the program and say what do we need to do . Is real intent in many cases for those individuals to get to the United States. We are the super bowl in terms of terrorists and that is what they want to do and that is where they want to come. Whether its knocking down airplanes in flight, and you know ive taken decisions on that that we will likely expand. They want to get here. They want to do us harm. That is my concern now that we are winning, if you will, and iraq in soon to win in syria that the fighters go back to their homes in europe and very possibly make the trip to the United States. Sobering, but im glad youre to thethat foresight returning forwar foreign fighter issue is a challenge. I might note that other foreign terrorist organizations have potentially been biding their time. Al qaeda is down but not out and the reality is theres a direct concern of the United States. Let me just ask the final question. You have served at a very intinguished military career all sorts of roles and capacities. Everyone ive spoken to