Pentagon plans for bigger US troop role at border

Summary
President Trump has called migrants, drug-traffickers and smugglers an invasion requiring a military response.WASHINGTON—Pentagon officials are planning options for using federal troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border against drug traffickers, human smugglers and migrants, a potentially major shift in military priorities ordered by President Trump, officials said Tuesday.
Use of the armed forces in a domestic role is restricted by laws prohibiting troops from engaging in law enforcement functions except in narrow circumstances. But an executive order Trump signed Monday described border threats normally left to law enforcement agencies as an “invasion" justifying a military response.
A push to expand the military’s domestic responsibilities faces multiple obstacles, including legal restrictions and the Pentagon’s reluctance to involve itself in what it has long viewed as law enforcement tasks.
Officials at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency in charge of securing the border and enforcing immigration law, scrambled to understand what the new mandate means for their agencies.
U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for military operations in North America, was given a month to craft a plan to combat “unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling, gang trafficking, and other criminal activities." Trump specified that it should “seal" the U.S.-Mexico border and repel “forms of invasion."
Military planners will need to determine how many troops are required, rules of engagement, as well as the equipment, vehicles and weapons required for a mission that active duty forces don’t usually train for, said Peter Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University.
Trump also signed an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which could allow the use of military force against these groups.
“We have started crafting courses of actions…what we think the mission is and what viable military operations could be used to do that mission," said Marine Col. Kelly Frushour, a spokeswoman for Northern Command.
Due to the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act, federal troops are generally prohibited from detaining migrants, seizing drugs from smugglers, intercepting or searching vehicles, or having any direct involvement in stopping people from crossing the border. Exceptions to the law permit the president to use troops against insurrection and domestic violence.
A separate Trump declaration of a national emergency along the border opens federal funding and allows National Guard troops to be sent to the border under the command of the president instead of governors from the states where the units are based.
Shortly after the Inauguration, the administration named Charles Young, who was the top lawyer in the National Guard Bureau, as the principal deputy general counsel for the department, the Pentagon said.
By describing migrants, drug traffickers and smugglers as invaders threatening U.S. security, the administration could possibly circumvent the Posse Comitatus law, though whether such a move will survive likely legal challenges is unclear, analysts said.
The claim that an invasion is occurring “at least plausibly permits the use of the armed forces at or near the border," though “judges and legal experts disagree whether mass undocumented immigration constitutes an ‘invasion,’" said John Dehn, faculty director of Loyola University Chicago’s national security and civil rights program.
During his first term, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and deployed thousands of troops there. But officials on Tuesday suggested the new administration was taking more aggressive action to expand the military’s role.
Trump appeared to be lumping migrants seeking asylum with drug cartels, which he has termed “enemy combatants," and treating both as national security threats. “When you use the military this way, you take them offline from other high-intensity threats, like China," Feaver said.
It isn’t clear whether the military’s role on the border would replace or overlap with the existing security operations carried out by DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and border agents.
The perception is that troops “will be lined up along the border apprehending or stopping people," says Gil Kerlikowske, who headed Customs and Border Protection in the Obama administration. “But this isn’t their expertise; this isn’t their area. They are only there for a short period of time, they don’t really understand the border."
Despite Trump’s sweeping order, federal troops are likely to mostly handle logistical, administrative, and maintenance tasks that free up border patrol agents, he added.
As many as 2,500 U.S. troops have been at the border in recent years at the request of DHS.
Pentagon officials have long insisted that border security isn’t a key mission for them. While most militaries in the world are intended to combat internal threats, the U.S. armed forces are trained and equipped to combat external threats. Involving troops not trained for law enforcement might sully the military’s image, former officials said.
“The military doesn’t want to see photographs of their people in uniform, separating families, dragging mothers out of cars, doing those kinds of enforcement things," said Kerlikowske.
Brandon Judd, the then-head of the National Border Patrol Union—which represents 15,000 agents and endorsed Trump—said at the time the troops’ presence was “a colossal waste of resources." Judd is now Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Chile.
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