A plan to dismantle DHS is moving from idea to legislation

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity panel says she has engaged fellow lawmakers about a sweeping legislative plan to dismantle the Department of Homeland Security that would involve sectioning out key components into their own standalone entities, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

In a phone interview, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., told Nextgov/FCW that she aims to have preliminary bill language in place that could be introduced at the start of next year, adding that she has spoken with other Democratic colleagues, including Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Greg Casar of Texas, Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, Robert Garcia of California and Washington state’s Emily Randall and Pramila Jayapal.

Citing her issues with the Trump administration’s maximal immigration agenda being enacted through Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol, Ramirez said she believes DHS has been weaponized. Key components like CISA, the Transportation Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard have been starved of resources, she said, adding that her planned legislation would seek to pull those agencies out into more autonomous structures that are harder to defund or politicize.

The White House has especially undermined CISA’s ability to coordinate on critical infrastructure security, she argued, citing various program cuts and workforce reductions put in place in the last 18 months. The agency lost a significant share of its staff over the past year, after the Trump administration moved to reduce and restructure the cyber shop through a mix of layoffs, early retirement offers, transfers and program cuts. It’s also seeking to shed hundreds of millions of dollars from the cyber agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget.

Ramirez’s proposed restructuring would be a significant undertaking requiring broad support in Congress and would likely have to include detailed directives about where DHS components and authorities should sit if the department were taken apart.

“Obviously this is going to be a pretty comprehensive bill. Dismantling DHS would have to then have the specifics of what happens to all of these agencies,” she said. “Do they end up becoming their own agency? Do they become their own department? How do we make sure that we put policy in place to protect their mission and the public, the essential authorities that come across every one of these particular agencies?”

Ramirez was named as the ranking member of the Homeland committee’s cyber subcommittee in April after former Rep. Eric Swalwell of California resigned from Congress.

In her role, she works alongside Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., the subcommittee chairman, whom she has clashed heavily with in the past. Last year, Ogles called for Ramirez to be deported and kicked off the committee. Ramirez was born in Chicago, Illinois to Guatemalan immigrants.

Asked about their relationship, she acknowledged “very vile” past comments from Ogles and “very many” differences between them but said she hopes to find common ground with the chairman on bettering CISA funding and restoring grants that help states and localities protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. She added that the two have “done some work together.” 

“My hope is that he and I can put some of the politics to the side, especially on their side, and really understand that we have to really fully fund the infrastructure systems necessary for us to be able to keep up with what we see happening with artificial intelligence,” she said.

AI sits at the center of Ramirez’s concerns because, she argues, the evolving technology is innovating fast “without guardrails” in place.

A recent export control order invoked by the White House forced AI company Anthropic to pull back access to a pair of powerful cyber-focused frontier models. The NSA, in particular, has been partially affected by the move. Ramirez said it’s “important for us to be able to have access to the advanced models” but that necessary testing and oversight is in place so that “we are not actually causing unintentionally security threats to our own systems.” 

She “absolutely” plans to ask officials at NSA, CISA and the Commerce Department for briefings on how export control actions affect government access to advanced AI models.

Ramirez recently filed an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would codify a key cyber vulnerability-tracking program within CISA, after it faced a contracting debacle last spring. 

She said the measure ensures “we are not getting another funding lapse that’s going to put us in a really vulnerable state.” The program, known as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, has for years provided organizations with a standardized methodology for logging publicly known security flaws. CISA has declined to publicly comment on the bill.

The cyber agency is seeking to hire around 330 staff in the coming months, its acting director Nick Andersen previously said. Ramirez said she had a recent meeting with Andersen, and that, while she’s “grateful that they’re moving towards this 330, really he’s going to have to step up significantly more than that, and it’s not going to happen by the end of this year.”

“I am grateful that the interim director is really trying to move towards making those 330 hires as quickly as possible,” though “these hires don’t happen overnight,” Ramirez said. “In some cases, it takes us three to four months to be able to get the clearances necessary to bring [new hires] on board.”

“In some cases, we think it’s going to take us at least a year, year and a half, to be able to get to the level that is necessary to keep up with the needs of CISA,” she added.

Ramirez said she sees “a lot of vulnerabilities right now on election security,” pointing to potential laws that could restrict ballot access. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump canceled a bill signing for bipartisan legislation on housing affordability, saying he wouldn’t support it until Congress passes his controversial SAVE AMERICA ACT, which would require that people provide documentary proof of citizenship to vote and significantly limit mail-in ballots.

An assessment published by Check Point this month said campaigns, fundraising platforms, public websites and local governments could face phishing, credential theft, AI-generated deception and foreign influence activity ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

“It just comes back to the idea that a lot of people are concerned about what does election integrity mean in terms of what the systems, the software, the polling locations look like on election day, but also what is the other kind of legislation that would make it even harder for people to be able to easily vote,” Ramirez said. “We have a lot of work to do, and this is actually one of the conversations with DHS that we’re trying to have more of.”