Jeh Johnson

Immigration is the most difficult issue I've ever dealt with, and I've dealt with some tough issues: drones, gays in the military, WikiLeaks, Guantanamo. But immigration is hardest because there are so few people willing to talk and build consensus. Everybody's firmly made up their mind. It's a polarized issue.

Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an 'assassination.'

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

ISIL, AQ, now have the ability to literally reach into our homeland through social media, through the Internet, to recruit and inspire. It makes for a more complicated homeland security environment. And so it requires a whole of government approach, not just military and law enforcement, homeland security, aviation security, and the like.

How could somebody be comfortable with authorizing legally the use of lethal force? My view is if you become comfortable with it, then you should get out of the job.

Overly simplistic suggestions that we ban people from entering this country, based on religion, or ban people from an entire region of the world is counterproductive. It will not work. We need to build bridges to communities, to American-Muslim communities right now, to encourage them to help us in our homeland security efforts.

We continually evaluate the world situation, and we not infrequently make changes to aviation security. We either step it up or we feel sometimes we're in a position to dial it back, and so this is something that happens periodically, and people should not overreact to it or over-speculate about what's going on.

Rhetoric that vilifies American Muslims is counter to our efforts. It's a setback to our Homeland Security efforts.

It is almost always the case that when someone self-radicalizes, someone close to them sees the sign, which is why we continue to encourage public awareness, public vigilance.

Those of us in public office and those of us who aspire to public office have a responsibility to be reasonable, fact-based, in our rhetoric and to not suggest things that are unreasonable, to whip up a lot of emotion in public, which can lead to government overreach, fear, suspicions, and prejudice.

It's better for candidates to suggest ideas that are responsible, not ones that are incapable of being executed. People are influenced by what their leaders tell them. And bringing the level of rhetoric down brings the temperature down.

The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.