Suspect in first court appearance
Prosecutors say they intend to seek death penalty
PITTSBURGH — Wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants, shackled and with a vacant expression, Robert Bowers sat before a federal judge in a downtown courtroom on Monday afternoon. Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 congregants in a hate-filled attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue named Tree of Life, arrived in a wheelchair pushed by a U.S. marshal.
Magistrate Judge Robert Mitchell gave an overview of the 29 criminal charges against him and asked him if he had received a copy of the complaint. “Yes,” Bowers replied firmly. Those charges included obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a hate crime, which can carry the death penalty, a sentence that federal authorities said Sunday they intended to pursue. He also faces state charges.
Bowers, 46, who had been shot by the police at the end of the attack before
The mobilization will include three combat engineer battalions, members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and troops who specialize in aviation, medical treatment and logistics, O’Shaughnessy said. Blackhawk helicopters sent to the area will have night-vision capabilities and sensors, carrying troops trained in the kind of aerial combat missions used by the military in active war zones.
“We’ll be able to spot and identify groups and rapidly deploy CBP personnel where they are needed,” O’Shaughnessy said.
The activation of such a large contingent of active-duty forces at the border — as opposed to National Guard troops — has no modern precedent and appeared to be the largest of its kind in a century during peacetime.
Kevin McAleenan, the top U.S. border security official, said the decision to send troops was not motivated by electoral politics but rather was a law enforcement necessity, as U.S. agents prepare for the possibility that crowds of migrants will amass and turn unruly.
McAleenan, the CBP commissioner, said his agency was tracking a caravan of about 3,500 people moving north through southern Mexico. A second group of about 3,000 that clashed with Mexican police over the weekend lags behind them.
“We are preparing for the contingency of large groups of arriving persons in the next several weeks,” he said. “We will not allow a large group to enter the United States in an unsafe and unlawful manner.”
In private, Homeland Security officials acknowledge they were alarmed by scenes of migrants breaking through a gate at Guatemala’s border with Mexico last week. The concentration of so many people at the U.S. border, the officials said, would amount to a potentially volatile and unprecedented crowd-control challenge for U.S. border agents and customs officers.
“What is new and challenging about this caravan phenomenon is the formation of multiple large groups that present unique safety and border security threats,” McAleenan said.
Last month, U.S. agents arrested a record number of migrant family members along the border, and more than half of those taken into custody now are parents with children or minors traveling along, McAleenan said.
“We’re already facing a border security and humanitarian crisis,” he said, adding that an average of 1,900 people have been crossing the border without authorization each day in recent weeks.
Immigrant advocacy groups and the American Civil Liberties Union blasted the move to send military forces and said migrants are exercising their rights under international and federal laws to seek asylum in the United States. Many are walking toward the United States with their families and say they are escaping violence and grinding poverty back home.
“These migrants need water, diapers and basic necessities — not an army division,” Shaw Drake, policy counsel for the ACLU’s Border Rights Center in El Paso, said in a statement. “Sending active military forces to our southern border is not only a huge waste of taxpayer money but an unnecessary course of action that will further terrorize and militarize our border communities.”
The active-duty deployment comes in addition to Operation Guardian Support, a National Guard mission launched last spring that involves just short of 2,100 troops. O’Shaughnessy, asked why the National Guard was not selected for the new mission, said the military is bringing “additional capability” with the active-duty troops. However, nearly all of the kinds of troops sought for Faithful Patriot exist in the Guard.
Initial deployments for the operation include soldiers from Fort Campbell and Fort Knox in Kentucky, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Riley in Kansas, according to a Pentagon document obtained by the Washington Post. Those deployments, which primarily include military police and engineers, began Monday and will continue throughout the week, according to the document.
A Pentagon activation message for the operation distributed internally Monday states that Homeland Security has requested that the Defense Department provide support to the CBP “through the arrival and detention of the migrant caravan currently traveling to the U.S. southern border no later than 30 October.”
The support will enhance the CBP’s ability to “impede or deny illegal crossings, maintain situational awareness and apply the appropriate law enforcement response as it contributes to the overall border security mission of CBP,” the message said.
O’Shaughnessy said that the personnel on the border will continue to follow the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents U.S. troops from taking a direct role in law enforcement missions in most circumstances.
O’Shaughnessy said the Pentagon also will deploy military police units and cargo aircraft, including three C-130s and one C-17. Combined command posts will be established to integrate U.S. military and CBP efforts.
The Pentagon already has sent 22 miles of concertina wire to the 1,954-mile-long border, he said, and has enough additional wire to cover 150 miles.
The deployments thrust the military further into a political fight in which the president increasingly has sought to cast the migrants as a national security threat in the days leading up to the Nov. 6 midterm elections.