Bid to use troops to secure border
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s strategy for the United StatesMexico border includes mobilising the National Guard, the White House said yesterday, after Trump had earlier spoken publicly to reporters about ‘‘guarding our border with the military’’ to stop illegal immigrants.
The White House statement was released after Trump met Defence Secretary James Mattis, Attorneygeneral Jeff Sessions and other officials on border issues. It gave no details on whether or when Trump’s strategy might be implemented.
The National Guard, part of the US military’s reserve forces, has been used in recent years for surveillance and intelligence on the border, but not for direct law enforcement.
The president’s earlier remarks sharpened his recurring antiimmigration rhetoric. He said he wanted to deploy US military forces until his longpromised border wall is built.
‘‘Until we can have a wall and proper security we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,’’ Trump said at the White House, lamenting what he called ‘‘horrible’’ US laws that left the southern border poorly protected.
Trump railed against a ‘‘caravan’’ of Central American migrants travelling from the MexicoGuatemala border in the past 10 days towards the US, journeys that have occurred annually since 2010 in an effort to draw attention to the plight of people fleeing violence in their countries.
Last night, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Twitter that the caravan
‘‘dispersed gradually and at the decision of its participants’’. Mexican officials said privately they believed Trump had exaggerated the caravan’s importance to renew pressure on Mexico over the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump’s latest comments immediately raised questions in Congress and among legal experts about troop deployments on US soil.
The Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law on the books since the 1870s, restricts using the US Army and other main branches of the military for civilian law enforcement on US soil, unless specifically authorised by Congress. The military can provide support services to law enforcement and has done so on occasion since the 1980s.
Under President George W. Bush, the National Guard between 2006 and 2008 provided borderrelated intelligence analysis, but had no direct law enforcement role. — Reuters