Pentagon rejected request for troops it viewed as emergency law enforcement at border
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When the Trump administration first asked the Pentagon to send troops to the southern border, the administration wanted the troops to take on duties that Department of Defense officials viewed as law enforcement functions, CNN has learned.
The Pentagon said no.
According to two defense official familiar with the request, the Department of Homeland Security asked that the Pentagon provide a reserve force that could be called upon to provide "crowd and traffic control" and safeguard Customs and Border Protection personnel at the border to counter a group of Central American migrants walking to the US border to request asylum...
Active duty US troops are barred from domestic law enforcement unless there is an emergency, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of having troops enforce the border as he campaigns hard on the dangers of immigration in the final days before the midterm elections.
At a White House speech on Thursday, the President suggested that troops should fire on migrants if they throw rocks, saying that rocks should be considered rifles and comparing the group of about 3,000 men, women and children to an "invasion."
On Friday, Trump tried to walk back those comments, telling reporters that "if our soldiers," or Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers "are going to be hit in the face with rocks, we're going to arrest those people. That doesn't mean shoot them. But we're going to arrest those people quickly and for a long time."
The defense officials described the force DHS requested as something that would only be used if CPB personnel were overwhelmed by the situation on the border.
Even so, the Pentagon rejected the request for the reserve "protection" force, while it simultaneously approved all of DHS' other requests for support with Secretary of Defense James Mattis' approval. It's not clear if Mattis weighed in on the decision to reject the request for troops to perform law enforcement functions...
The Posse Comitatus law forbids the US military from enforcing domestic laws, unless there's no other choice. Military analysts say Trump can easily use the National Guard, US Marshals or personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to back up border officers if need be...
Senior military officers have defended the deployment on national security grounds, but the mission -- dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot -- has been met with scathing criticism from many former military officials.
Retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015, tweeted Friday that "our men and women in uniform are better trained, better equipped, and better led so they meet any threat with confidence. A wasteful deployment of over-stretched soldiers and Marines would be made much worse if they use force disproportional to the threat they face. They won't."
03 Nov 2018, 1:38 am
