In a high-stakes standoff on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats have withheld funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until Republicans agree to reforms of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That DHS unit that has become a focal point of intense controversy following the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents.

The presence of ICE agents in cities across the country—including Houston; Phoenix; Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; Chicago; New York; Los Angeles; and Minneapolis—as they carry out an extraordinarily aggressive deportation campaign has shocked much of the nation. According to one recent poll, 60 percent of Americans believe that ICE has gone too far.

In a high-stakes standoff on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats have withheld funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) until Republicans agree to reforms of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That DHS unit that has become a focal point of intense controversy following the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents.

The presence of ICE agents in cities across the country—including Houston; Phoenix; Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; Chicago; New York; Los Angeles; and Minneapolis—as they carry out an extraordinarily aggressive deportation campaign has shocked much of the nation. According to one recent poll, 60 percent of Americans believe that ICE has gone too far.

The controversy over ICE has raised questions about its home institution, the Department of Homeland Security, which grants the president extensive resources to deploy within U.S. borders. In a country that has long prided itself on the separation of powers and limits on the executive branch, DHS looks much more like the “garrison state” that traditional conservatives and civil libertarians have always warned against. With DHS at his command, a president can quickly become imperial.

The story of its creation is a reminder of how profoundly President George W. Bush transformed the country in the aftermath of 9/11, building a massive national security apparatus comparable to the one established at the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s. Although Bush’s policies were implemented with the aim of preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack akin to the one carried out by al Qaeda, President Donald Trump has shown that, in different hands, these centralized institutions can easily be repurposed and used in ways far removed from what most Americans had envisioned.

Fears about creating an institution as powerful as DHS were central to the reform efforts of the mid-1970s. In 1975 and 1976, high-level congressional hearings led by New York Rep. Otis Pike and Idaho Sen. Frank Church exposed the underside of U.S. Cold War policies since World War II. Through the hearings and reports, the country learned how the CIA had conducted surveillance of anti-war protesters, attempted to assassinate foreign leaders, and operated with little accountability to elected officials.

The national security apparatus had given the president formidable tools to wield at his discretion. “Intelligence agencies have undermined the constitutional rights of citizens,” the resulting Church Committee report warned, “primarily because checks and........

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