CCTV — U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday that the United States continues to step up its efforts to stop terrorism at airports, ports and on social media.
He made the remarks at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. where he answered questions following his State of Homeland Security address and emphasized that active shooter training is one of the best ways to protect U.S. citizens against self-radicalized terrorists, who poses higher risk to them and are more difficult to be discovered.
When asked whether the just released budget of 4.1 trillion U.S. dollars for fiscal year 2017 including 40.6 billion U.S. dollars provided for the DHS means the country is facing less challenges in fighting terrorism, Johnson said the DHS is still on high alert for terror attacks.
“The short answer is we have not at all de-prioritized counter-terrorism or homeland security, but we have to live within our budget caps and the budget agreement that was made. But we have a pretty sophisticated method for identifying high-risk cargo and applying extra examination to that at ports as they’re imported,” said Johnson.
Johnson said the DHS spent approximately two billion U.S. dollars last year in buying more monitoring equipment and training local law enforcement, proving that the cooperation with them plays an important role in anti-terrorism.
The DHS will share intelligence with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to fight extremists, according to Johnson.
He added that the DHS in 2015 stopped around 10,000 travelers from coming into the United States at 15 overseas airports as they did not pass pre-clearance checks. The department will step up the screening at another 10 international airports in nine countries in the near future.
