Trump Administration Denies Considering Use of National Guard for Deportations

Friday morning, the Associated Press cited a Trump Administration draft memo from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly which would implement an executive order signed by President Donald Trump regarding border patrol and immigration enforcement.

“This is not true”.

Minutes before Spicer tweeted responses to the Associated Press and NPR, AP reported that the “draft memo says participating troops would be authorized ‘to perform the functions of an immigration officer'”. He wrote the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the memo was false.

According to the draft memo, the militarisation effort would be proactive, specifically empowering troops to exclusively carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the programme.

Supporters of the Trump administration took issue with the AP’s framing of the story. Discussion of the National Guard was dropped before the memo ever made it to Kelly’s desk, the official said. In fact, it is at least possible that the plan was never discussed beyond the staff level at DHS. That’s consistent with DHS’s statement that it’s an “early draft”. And it also fit into what appears to be a pattern of ignoring reporters’ requests for comment, only to push back quickly after stories are published. “It’s not something that DHS can just do on its own”. Using them to empower the National Guard to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants would represent an expansion of that policy.

Locally, organizations that work with Immigrants say, under Trump’s administration, they have seen a growing number of calls from Immigrants that are anxious or nervous about being deported. Doing so would raise thorny legal questions over who would have command over those troops, and you can bet more than few governors would balk at the idea of militarizing immigration enforcement in this way. Instead, the reference mentions “those States adjoining border States”.

Governors of these states would be able to order their guard troops to not participate in the order. The plan would send troops not only to border states, but also farther north.

At a maximum, approximately 100,000 Army National Guard and Air National Guard personnel would be available for stateside missions in the 11 states, according to statistics and information provided by the National Guard Bureau.

The National Guard has been deployed to the border before, both by Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, as well as by then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012. “The White House has adamantly denied there are efforts underway to mobilize the National Guard for this objective”. The answer depends on the law that’s being enforced. “Imagine deputizing 100,000 people who are trained to do different things?”