In an effort to bring reality TV even closer to home and heat up the immigration debate even more, the ABC television network has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to bring COPS-starved tube watchers a glimpse into the often dangerous, always entertaining life of America's Homeland Security officers.

The show, appropriately titled Homeland Security U.S.A., debuted on ABC January 6, and will try its run at reality TV until the pilot's thirteen hour-long episodes successfully unveils enough national security information to trigger a shutdown.

But not everyone shares this opinion. U.S Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary Amy Kudwa says that the most important national security secrets will be kept within American borders-instead of being broadcast weekly on national TV.

"We're mindful that in being transparent, we don't want to be helpful in giving information to individuals that would be harmful to the U.S.," Kudwa said. "We also review privacy information; [we make sure we are not] violating the privacy of any individuals to whom we're coming in contact, so we do review the footage and make sure some things are blurred out, like specific lines of questioning."

Anyone watching the first two episodes closely enough would have noticed that among other things, some DHS officer's faces were blurred out while others were not. According to Kudwa, the officers whose faces are not shown are ICE-Immigration and Customs Enforcement-agents who often work undercover and whose identity is a national secret, not fit for television audiences.

After approaching DHS with the idea, the Nate & Lil Productions company was, over the course of the last six to nine months, given rare filming privileges on DHS facilities, such as U.S. borders, airports, and seaports, to shoot spontaneous criminal activity investigated by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the U.S. Coast Guard, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Thus far, in separate border control cases, viewers have been witness to all the glory of the DHS. This includes the denial of entry and detention of a Canadian man possibly suspected to have ties to terrorism; the denial of entry and deportation of a Swiss woman looking to work in the U.S. as a belly dancer without a work VISA; the location of several illegal aliens trying to cross the deadly heat of the Arizona Sonora Desert; one count of human trafficking; one order of deportation for a father of two; the seizure of 123 pounds of marijuana and 77 pounds of cocaine; and about a dozen smoked bats from Cambodia-an import not only disgusting and elusive to classify, but also illegal.

But the show doesn't just tout the agency's successes. In one episode, border patrol officers horrified a family with weapons drawn only to realize the suspected man was not the fugitive they sought. Another incident at JFK airport revealed the mysterious pills stashed in the lining of an American man's boxers that took officers at least half a dozen negative narcotics field test kits to label ‘an unknown substance' to be fake OxyContin pills that merited no charge.

Although she admits the show is for entertainment purposes, Kudwa said DHS personnel saw Homeland Security U.S.A. as a valuable opportunity to show Americans what DHS does.

"[DHS employees] were excited at the opportunity," Kudwa said. "We've only existed for five and a half years and so we don't have that long history with Americans and...it's important for people to see the hard work of the 218,000 DHS employees, the front line officers who are working day in and day out to protect Americans."

That kind of heroic action is what viewers got in the second episode, which concluded with a former Yugoslavian border patrol agent who was given political asylum in 1991 allowing a Cuban woman entry to the U.S. after finding out that the immigration process was expedited for "qualifying Cuban nationals."  OhMyGov! can't help but wonder if a Cuban national has to be pro-American and anti-Castro to qualify.