Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary, Says Next DHS Head Will Need 'Large Bottle Of Advil'

Janet Napolitano's successor as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security should come armed with "a large bottle of Advil", said Napolitano on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. One major reason for her headaches during her four-and-a-half years at the helm of the DHS? Congress' failure to pass any of the various formulations of a bill which would've given legal status and a path to citizenship for many of the nation's young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US by their parents as children. "Congress had a chance to give the so-called dreamers a way to stay in our country through the DREAM Act but, unfortunately, that legislation failed to garner the 60 votes need for cloture, falling just five votes short despite strong bipartisan support," Napolitano said.

The outgoing DHS head added that various controversial policy changes made during her tenure were "no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform, which is the only way to face the long-standing problems with our immigration system." Perhaps the most significant of these changes was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a 2012 executive order from President Barack Obama which made an estimated 1.9 million undocumented immigrants eligible for work authorization and a two-year, renewable reprieve from deportation processes. For this and other administrative decisions - releasing thousands of undocumented immigrants from detention facilities due to sequester-spawned budget concerns and setting prosecution priorities so as to more swiftly try and deport criminals - Napolitano faced stiff conservative opposition during her tenure.

But she also drew the ire of immigrant advocates for setting records in every year of her tenure for deportations of undocumented immigrants. In 2012, her department deported over 400,000 individuals. In previous years, as many as 69 percent of deportees were non-criminal or low-level offenders (nearly 40 percent were picked up on driving violations or other low-level crimes in 2011). And parents of US citizen children made up almost a quarter of all deportations - between 2010 and 2012, a total of 204,810. Napolitano has defended that record, saying those deported had committed crimes.

In her farewell speech, Napolitano also warned that a major cyber-attack on the US homeland appeared inevitable in the near future, and called for her successors to prepare defenses against it. "Our country will, at some point, face a major cyber event that will have a serious effect on our lives, our economy, and the everyday functioning of our society," Napolitano said. "While we build systems, protections and a framework to identify attacks and intrusions, share information with the private sector and across government and develop plans and capabilities to mitigate the damage, more must be done, and quickly."

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