Today, in addition to protecting America’s borders and airports, the department is interrogating people suspected of pirating movies at Ohio theaters, seizing counterfeit NBA merchandise in San Antonio and working pickpocket cases alongside police in Albuquerque. Homeland Security agents are visiting elementary schools and senior centers to warn of dangers lurking on the Internet.

Some government watchdogs and civil liberties advocates – and even the nation’s first Department of Homeland Security secretary – question how those actions serve the purpose set forth in the 2002 law.

“They’ve kind of lost their way,” former Secretary Tom Ridge told the Journal in Washington this month. “I was proud to be associated with those men and women, but it just seems to me … the focus – the primary focus – has been substantially diminished.”

Meanwhile, a top Homeland Security official in Albuquerque said the department wants to enlarge its law enforcement presence – at least in New Mexico – even more.

“I really do want to expand the footprint as far as my side of Homeland Security,” said Kevin Abar, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New Mexico, in a Journal interview.

“Too many people think we do immigration, and we don’t really do any of that at all.”

Homeland Security Investigations falls under the jurisdiction of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and focuses “on a wide range of domestic and international activities” including financial and cyber crimes, narcotics, human smuggling and other offenses, according to the DHS website. The investigations unit has 10,000 employees and 6,700 special agents assigned to more than 200 U.S. cities and 47 foreign countries.