Homeland Security Department Builds Ties to Middle-Eastern Police Group

The Homeland Security Department is making good on its commitment to cultivating ties with Muslim American communities to enlist cooperation in heading off terrorism.

On Thursday, Secretary Jeh Johnson traveled to Dearborn, Mich.,—home to a large Arab-American population—to address the first annual conference the newly formed Middle Eastern Law Enforcement Officers Association.

Membership in that registered charity has grown by 500 percent since January, mostly by enlisting employees of Middle Eastern backgrounds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration, according to a blogpost from DHS’s Office of Community Partnerships.

“It has been proven, time and again, that a law enforcement community, a police force, a law enforcement organization that looks like the community that they serve builds trust,” Johnson told the group. “When I look around this room at all the people who work for DHS, I have tremendous optimism for our future.”

In 2014, as the Syria and Iraq-based terror group ISIS made disturbing headway in recruiting terrorists within Western countries, DHS announced that it was actively pursuing community partnerships.

The program theme of “countering violent extremism has . . . become a key focus of DHS’s work to secure the homeland,” the DHS office says on its website. “Lone offenders or small groups may be radicalized to commit violence at home or attempt to travel overseas to become foreign fighters. The use of the Internet and social media to recruit and radicalize individuals to violence means that conventional approaches are unlikely to identify and disrupt all terrorist plots.”