Security. This will be the first public address of its kind that kelly will give since his swearingin. We are honored that he chose us for the venue for this speech. We are currently ranked as the most politically engaged student body in the nation. That means our students are actively involved in the events of the day all across the spectrum. We talk about giving students a front row seat to the theater of history, and this is a good example of what that means. We are also glad that we have been supporting veterans actively in the Yellow Ribbon program for a number of years. Currently, we have 1800 veterans and their dependents being educated here. Specifically on the topic of todays conversation, i want to talk about longterm involvement in Homeland Security issues. First of all, all four of secretary kellys press secretaries have visited our campus. I think they highlight the work we do in this field. The faculty at George Washington the faculty at George Washington has been working since before september 11. Key leaders in that are with us today. I want to mention the director of the George Washington center for cyber and Homeland Security. I would like to have him introduce secretary kelly. I know you will enjoy his presentation today. 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 a 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 today and as the president mentioned we had the opportunity 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. 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 command roles and staff roles, as well as educational roles. Really excited to hear from general kelly. He is a patriots fan. I will not hold that against him. And a red sox fan. Im thrilled to have general elly for us today. So 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. It is important to provide context, 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 that objective. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to host general kelly. He is the fifth secretary of Homeland Security, oversees a workforce of 200,000 people. He is here to recognize that to discuss not only the priorities of the homeland but to reck but to recognize that Homeland Security starts overseas, and i might know, we have a number of executives, including ambassadors. I see thest tonian ambassador up front. I see the japanese executives, belgian ambassador, 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. [applause] secretary kelly thanks very much, frank, and thanks for the kind words. And to g. W. For hosting this event today. When i retired, my biggest fear was to be offered another fulltime job, particularly in the government. I did not want to go up and down the beltway that i did so many other times. I did not like the bureaucracy, but here i am today. When i make my way up 95, the first thing i read is the clips that are taken out of areas 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. Could not be prouder to serve i look forward to making that distinction. Ill start with something. 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. When you are having your morning coffee, the coast guard is pulling a fisherman out of his boat, capsized in pretty heavy seas, and while you are deciding what you want for lunch, a Training Center is teaching Law Enforcement officers how to respond to an active shooter. When you are scrolling through facebook, we are figuring out how to defeat ieds, or nvestigators are closing in on a child predator, tsa is topping a madman who is with a loaded gun from boarding flight to disney world. While state and local politicians, we are listening to partial and inaccurate media reporting on some alleged incident at an airport, a courthouse, or a Border Crossing and assume the men and women of d. H. S. Are intentionally abusing innocent individuals while they break or ignore, that is to say, while my people are breaking and ignoring 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. Thats the ordinary day, and one that simply does not make the paper. Every day in a million different way, d. H. S. Employees are making our country more secure. They are standing guard against the hazards we face as a nation. They are enforcing the laws that congress has passed because we are lucky enough to live in a nation of laws. We do our jobs so you and your families can live a peaceful life, a safe life , in a free country. But make no mistake. We are in fact a nation under attack. We are 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 live our lives. We are under attack from failed states, 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 larger story and critical to what we do. But our jobs are to score the to secure the nation from the threats we face from all hazards. But one of the greatest hazards is from transnational criminal organizations. Like terrorists, tcos inflict brutality and regularly behead their victims. They intimidate and threaten people. They 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. Hay take the form of drug cartels and international gangs. They share their business dealings and violent practices for the sophisticated networks move anything and everything across our borders including human beings. We have set out to stop that movement to the greatest degree we can. Human smugglers take thousands f 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. These people are often beaten or raped. The smugglers make a few uarantees. 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 outside the western hemisphere into the United States. The special interests, if from part of the world where terrorism is present, are hostile to the United States. These individuals take huge sums of money to transport them from the middle east, through south and central america. Into the United States. We do not get to vet them. We do not know their intentions. We do not know why they are here. They send them to our country and are living among us. We are blind as to what they are capable of. The damage t. C. O. s do in violence and potential terror soninlaw part of the story. They move vast amounts of cocaine and heroin, methamphetamines. They move these tonnages across our borders. To feed both the recreational and addictive u. S. Drug demand. U. S. Customs and protections, u. S. Immigrations, ice, and omeland investigations are witness to the vast quantity of drugs that are trafficked into the United States every day with devastating consequences. In 2015, the most recent data, over 52,000 deaths from these drugs in the United States caused by these overdoses. It is the highest number of deaths our country has ever seen, more deaths than the peak of the aids epidemic. In a single year we have lost as Many Americans as we lost in ntire world war i. Its almost what we lost in the 12 years of fighting in vietnam. That is just overdose deaths. That number says nothing about the longterm health damaged our citizens who survived, to say nothing about the human misery, the families ripped apart, and the extremes of crime 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. 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, its use and possession is against federal law. We in d. H. S. , 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 the airports and land ports of entry and will take appropriate actions. When marijuana is found at airports, tsa personnel will take action. Ice will use convictions as essential elements as they build their deportation, removal, apprehension packages for targeted operations against illegal aliens. They have done this in the past, are doing it today, and will ontinue in the future. Now about terrorism. The t. C. O. s have a devastating effect on our homeland. 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 as you pass onto an irplane. The threat to our nation, our american way of life, has not iminished. 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 raq. Thousands more from nations in asia, africa, the western hemisphere have also joined that fight. They have learned how to make ieds, employ drones to drop ordnance. 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 United States. Because many are citizens of countries in our visawaived 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 difficult challenge. Few of the challenges we face from a terrorism point of view are more difficult. We have seen an unprecedented spike in homegrown terrorism. The past 12 months, there have been 36 homegrown terrorist ases opened. These are the cases we know about. Homegrown terrorism is difficult to predict an almost impossible to control. What is feeding the violence . Typically, it is the internet. From anywhere across the world, organizations are sharing hateful propaganda with impressionable people. They publish revolting howto manuals, teaching their followers how to build bombs and kill innocent people. They trade in pictures of people being stoned to death. If you are a terrorist with an internet connection, you can recruit soldiers, you can upload a video calling for a jihad with a few clicks. Thanks to encryption devices and security medication techniques, these individuals are becoming harder and harder and, i predict, impossible to detect. Until community leaders, teachers, Law Enforcement are more aware of their options to prevent that message from taking hold, our youth are prey to these predators. We are under a take attack from within and outside our borders. These people 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. Without exaggeration, i tell you they tried to carry out this mission each and every day, each and every night. They are relentless. Hey cannot be stopped. Unless men and women like those who serve in d. H. S. , military and Law Enforcement are ever vigilant, and they are. Cyber, not just bombs and guns are threats against him, and other types of conflict are 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 sophisticated tools. There are global criminal organizations that operate like a legitimate business right down to Customer Service support. There are lone wolves on the nternet. 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. These attackers steal intellectual property, personal data, and health information. They are thieves, saboteurs, and nemies of democracy. And potentially much, much more. We live in an interconnected world, thats not a trend, thats 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 process trades . What would happen to the transportation if the navigation satellites suddenly went dead . What happen if a major city lost power . Cyber threats present a tremendous danger to our way of life, which are no less significant from the regular world. It is a big job, this department. We are up against criminal organizations, cyber attacks, ssassins, pandemics, hurricanes, and oil spills. The danger israel real, but so is our dedication, professionalism, and expertise. These risks 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 vow 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 Exceptional People we are. Every day we take a stand against the forces that endeavor to take 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 succeed occasionally to make a point. Back to talking about crime. No better argument about secure border than the transnational organizations we face. Since the first week of the new administration, we have been securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws. Not only is this our right, it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of the american eople. People who illegally cross our borders do not respect the laws of our nation. We want to get the lawbreakers out of our country. Being serious about our borders is not only good for the american people, but will also ave lives. In 2016, customs and Border Protection save nearly 4000 individuals who found themselves abandoned by the coyotes in the desert and nearly died. 000 saved. Much has been made up 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 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, 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 t