Trump gives thumbs up to use of force
WASHINGTON: The Trump Administration plans to grant US troops on the Mexican border the authority to use force to help protect Border Patrol officers, defence officials said yesterday, a significant widening of a mission already criticised as politically motivated rather than a national security priority.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order giving armed troops the authority to intervene if US personnel are endangered by migrants trying to cross the border, the officials said. The order does not rule out use of deadly force.
The order could face legal challenges to determine if it violates a US law that bars activeduty military from conducting domestic law enforcement functions. The Posse Comitatus Act, first passed in 1878 and amended several times, is intended to limit the government’s ability to use military personnel within the United States except in natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other national emergencies.
Roughly 5900 activeduty soldiers and marines were sent to border posts in California, Texas and Arizona shortly before the November 6 election in one of the largest such deployments in decades.
Most of the troops are unarmed and restricted from interacting with migrants, and critics — including some former senior military officers — condemned the operation as using activeduty troops for partisan gain.
The expected expansion of their role is likely to deepen questions into whether he is trampling longstanding practices on the legal use of the military on US soil, and raises the risk a confrontation with unarmed migrants could escalate into deadly violence. —