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Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there had been a “significant increase” in the past 10 years of homegrown violent extremism.

Mayorkas said, “We have a heightened threat environment, as Director Wray and the attorney general both articulated, and we’ve been saying this for quite a number of months. We have not only the persistent threat of foreign terrorism that, of course, created the Department of Homeland Security, but we have adverse nation-states, and for the past 10 years, we’ve seen a significant increase in what we term homegrown violent extremism. It is a very difficult threat landscape and it is why that we as a community, not just the federal government, but state and local officials and residents, need to be alert to it and take the precautions necessary to avoid violence from occurring.”

He continued, “When we identify a specific threat, we in law enforcement respond very quickly to it. In that regard, as we continue to grieve for the victims of the terrorist attack in New Orleans.”

Mayorkas added,”The phenomenon of radicalization of individuals is not limited to the military. It is something that we are very focused upon in society writ large. The military is not immune to it, nor is the federal work force, but this is something that we have to address as a community, not politicize, but rather be united in confronting and combatting.”

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