President Donald Trump’s initial steps toward executing his promised tough-on-immigration plans featured a highly visible role for the military and federal agents in tactical gear, a show of force that the administration has touted on social media.
Military aircraft flew migrants back to numerous countries, a move that sparked some international pushback. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted photos on social media of a line of people behind a military plane and wrote, “Deportation flights have begun.”
The White House account posted a video on social media last week of what appears to be the Marine Corps operating Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and trucks along the U.S.-Mexico border with the message “Promise Made –> Promise KEPT!”
And administration officials, including Tom Homan and newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, have appeared on the ground in media reports and social media posts alongside agents tasked with performing immigration enforcement raids.
CNN reported that at least two agencies aiding in immigration raids have told personnel to ensure their clothing clearly depicts their respective agency in case they are filmed.
Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the visibility of such domestic deportation efforts by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was no accident.
“I think an ICE raid, to me anyway, when you’re going into a school, into a community, you do it very publicly with cameras, you’re looking for a photo op, and you’re looking to intimidate people,” Kelly said Wednesday during a breakfast forum hosted by Politico.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Tuesday that Trump’s visible use of the military was intended to send a signal to potential migrants who would seek to break the law by entering the United States illegally.
“I do think that what’s going to help a lot is the fact that the president has made it very clear that in his mind, and I think in the minds of most Americans, illegal immigration is illegal, duh,” Kennedy said. “And we’re going to enforce the law, and the word is going to go forward, and I think that will help to stem the tide of the migrants coming to the southern border.”
The short-lived dispute over the weekend that started with Colombia’s revocation of authorization of the return of migrants apparently was based in part on President Gustavo Petro’s objections to the use of military aircraft as the mode of travel, which he articulated Sunday in a post on social media.
“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro wrote in Spanish, according to translation. “That’s why I turned back the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants. I cannot allow migrants to remain in a country that does not want them; but if that country sends them back, it must be with dignity and respect for them and for our country. We will receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals.”
Armed forces in support roles
Soldiers at Fort Campbell in Kentucky on Sunday announced they were en route to the U.S. southern border, in support of the new mission to work together with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection. It wasn’t immediately clear what the role of these troops would be in coordination with nonmilitary immigration officials at the border.
“We are trained and ready to support this important mission,” Lt. Col. Phillip Mason, 716th Military Police Battalion commander, said in a statement. “Our Soldiers are committed to protecting all Americans and supporting our civilian partners in defending the territorial integrity of the United States.”
Every administration since George W. Bush’s presidency has had troops at the border to assist in non-law-enforcement activities, including during the Biden administration.
In response to a question from a reporter Monday about the role of the military, Pete Hegseth, newly confirmed as secretary of Defense, said that “whatever is needed at the border will be provided,” citing various legal authorities for the military and the National Guard.
“This is a shift,” Hegseth said. “This is the way business has been done in the past. … The Defense Department will support the defense, the territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border.”
Chad Wolf, who served as a homeland security official in Trump’s first term and is now executive director of the America First Policy Institute, said during Wednesday’s breakfast forum that military efforts should be welcome because the Defense Department has resources that other agencies lack.
“You’ve got DEA, you’ve got ATF, you’ve got other law enforcement officers helping, so that’s great,” Wolf said. “You’re going to eventually need more detention space, and you’re going to need more air assets. We already see DOD pumping there.”
Wolf, who spoke at the breakfast forum after Kelly, rejected the Arizona Democrat’s assertion that the use of these resources in immigration enforcement was excessive.
“I think I heard the senator talk about maybe that’s overkill a little bit,” Wolf said. “It’s very difficult to find these 747s. They’re chartered aircraft. There’s only so many of them that ICE has access to. So how about having the Department of Defense, with their air assets, come in and to help? That makes an immense amount of sense.”
Legal limitations
Military involvement in border security assisting comes with significant legal limitations. Federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, enacted after the Civil War, bars Trump from using the military as a police force, so the military would be able to assist in supporting border officials but could not conduct arrests.
But use of the military is not unprecedented: The National Guard was deployed to assist in border security operations by Presidents George W. Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2010.
Laura A. Dickinson, a law professor at The George Washington University who specializes in national security, said for the most past Trump so far has drawn upon the military to enforce immigration law “in keeping with what past presidents have done; they’re playing a supportive role,” but there are questions about whether that could change.
“They’ve served at checkpoints, lookouts. They’ve inspected containers,” Dickinson said. “As long as that’s only in a supportive capacity then, at least under existing legal frameworks, they can do it. I think the question is, you know, is the president going to ask them to do direct law enforcement?”
The use of the military comes on the heels of one of the many executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office in which he designated a specific role for the military in border security. The directive requires the Defense secretary within 10 days to create an updated plan for United States Northern Command to “seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States,” which includes repelling unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking as well as human smuggling and trafficking.
Trump also directed the military to have an elevated Level 3 planning requirement for border security, a plan to provide steady-state southern border security and continuous assessments of all options available to guard against mass unlawful entry.
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the legality of Trump drawing on armed forces to enforce immigration law depends on several factors, including whether they respect the authority of states in use of the National Guard.
Kaine predicted that the Senate would also want to examine whether the use of the military in conducting removals would detract from the military’s ability to fulfill other missions.
“Sometimes it’s not a matter of what you’re doing, it’s a matter of what you’re not doing to do the thing that you’re doing,” Kaine said. “So what are the missions these folks are being called out of? And I think the Armed Services Committee is really going to want to dig into [that].”
One major issue that has emerged is whether Trump will seek to draw upon existing law that would allow him to expand the use of the military within the United States under extraordinary purposes, such as the Alien Enemies Act and the Insurrection Act.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a key player in Trump’s immigration policy, didn’t rule out invoking the Insurrection Act in an interview Tuesday on CNN, saying it’s being considered for operational needs at the country’s southern border.
‘Incredibly dangerous power’
An expert witness at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing last week called into question Trump’s potential use of the Alien Enemies Act, which the president enumerated in a separate executive order on employing the military to remove criminal drug cartels operating in the United States.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the CATO Institute, warned that the invocation of the law would give Trump the power to use the military to deport people “without proving that they’re in the country illegally or are removable from the United States” in response to a question from Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, D-Ill., who asked about the role of the armed forces in mass deportations.
“That’s an incredibly dangerous power that threatens the rights of all Americans. It also could apply even to legal permanent residents and other noncitizens who could be removed,” Bier said. “Again, we’re not subject to an invasion by a foreign government, as required by the act, so I don’t know where he’s going to be able to justify the use of this, this authority that was designed for cases of war.”
Dickinson said Trump’s potential use of the Insurrection Act to call upon the military, which she said previously has “been used as a scalpel, like for a short period of time in a very specific context,” presents other problems if invoked to enforce immigration law.
“It could be very demoralizing for armed forces to do direct law enforcement. It could affect recruitment, and it could affect readiness,” Dickinson said. “If you put all these military at the border — and that’s even if they’re not doing law enforcement, put all these military at the border — they’re less available for other types of national security crises that might occur. So it could affect readiness if he puts too many armed forces at the border.”
The post Trump immigration enforcement push comes with military flourish appeared first on Roll Call.
