Troops’ mission on border unclear
Critics: ‘National emergency’ just an election ploy
The Pentagon has been landing transport planes in Texas for almost a week, part of a deployment of as many as 15,000 active-duty troops to the border on a mission that critics say has less to do with national security than its impact on midterm elections.
Operation Faithful Patriot erupted as a partisan flashpoint after President Donald Trump announced his intention to send soldiers and equipment to the border to prevent several thousand impoverished Central Americans from entering the country.
In tweets and at rallies, Trump has said without evidence that a caravan of men, women and children making its way on foot through Mexico contained “some very bad thugs and
gang members,” unidentified Middle Easterners and “some very tough fighters,” and has suggested they would try to storm the border by force.
Several former military and intelligence leaders scoffed at the purported threat.
The troops being deployed have no military objective, said Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force general who was CIA director under President George W. Bush.
“This represents security theater and is not based upon any concrete request made by anyone,” said Hayden, who also led the National Security Agency and once commanded the Air Intelligence Agency here. “The caravan is 900 miles away and frankly not an unprecedented event. … (It) has never required this kind of response in the past.”
The caravan started in Honduras. It and two other convoys loosely organized behind it are weeks away — if they arrive at all. Previous such efforts have disintegrated before reaching the border, with some of the travelers joining an ongoing drama of individuals and families seeking asylum at U.S. ports of entry or surrendering to border agents after crossing without papers.
The Central Americans typically cite threats to their lives from gangs, other criminals and their own governments. So far, they haven’t been dissuaded by a week of promises by Trump to prevent their entry to the U.S. by force if necessary.
Rules of engagement
As with the multistate National Guard border operation that Trump ordered last spring, the deployment is designed to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations. The troops are not allowed to act in a law enforcement capacity and can’t detain or arrest immigrants.
They work under rules of engagement designed to minimize the chance of incidents like the 1997 fatal shooting of Esequiel Hernandez, 18, by a four-man Marine unit outside the West Texas town of Redford.
Hernandez was herding his family’s goats; his death abruptly ended training exercises of armed military personnel on the border.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. William Speaks, declined to discuss “hypothetical situations or specific measures within our rules on the use of force, but our forces are trained professionals who always have the inherent right of defense.”
The military’s use of force rules allow unit commanders and their troops to exercise self-defense “to a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent.”
Trump suggested Thursday that the troops were allowed to shoot at anyone who throws rocks at them, saying: “I will tell you this: Anybody throwing stones, rocks like they did to Mexico … we will consider that a firearm.”
That’s not how the armed forces long have interpreted rules of engagement in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Trump invoked a “national emergency” at the southern border to justify blocking immigrants from requesting asylum, based on a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act under which the president can suspend or restrict entry of certain migrants he deems “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
The announcement was the president’s most controversial in a week in which he sought to make immigration the defining issue for voters in Tuesday’s elections.
Before Trump walked back his comments Friday, saying rock-throwers would be subject to arrest, the reaction on Twitter from retired military brass was biting.
“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,” wrote retired Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, a former Joint Chiefs chairman.
The border deployments of Guard and active-duty troops could cost $200 million by the end of 2018, according to analyst and Pentagon figures compiled by the Washington Post.
Retired Army Gen. Mark Hertling, who commanded U.S. Army Europe, said “there is no leader in the military — officer or NCO — who would allow a soldier to shoot at an individual throwing a rock.”
Two military justice scholars, Geoffrey Corn of South Texas College of Law and St. Mary’s University School of Law professor Jeff Addicott, said the rules don’t change even when a president declares a national emergency or airs his opinion on what the rules should be.
Troops can fire their weapons only when confronting a threat of death or great bodily harm to themselves, others in their unit or a federal agent, Corn said.
Addicott, who calls himself a constitutional conservative agreed, saying: “A rock-thrower does not represent deadly force.”
‘Purely political’
Criticism of the border operation has come from lawmakers, former soldiers and defense scholars who questioned the rationale or the appropriateness of the policy.
“Sending troops to the border is a Band-Aid that does not address systemic CBP personnel shortages or stop the flow of migration from Central America,” said U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-San Antonio.
It’s highly unlikely that active-duty troops are needed to provide capabilities the National Guard doesn’t have, said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, a former commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, N.C., who’s known for being a mentor to Defense Secretary James Mattis.
“It’s purely political, it’s all for show,” Van Riper said.
Jacqueline Hazelton, who teaches counterinsurgency and counterterrorism at the U.S. Naval War College, agreed the National Guard would be more effective at supporting border security based on its traditional role helping state and local authorities in times of crisis.
“In addition to there being no need for the skills of active-duty forces — they are specialists in the uses of violence — there are legal complications to trying to use them,” Hazelton said.
There’s no indication that unarmed people who have the right to ask for entry “would be able to bum rush a Border Patrol checkpoint, even if they wanted to,” she added.
The National Guard operation Trump ordered last spring still was at 50 percent of its planned strength when he directed the Defense Department to dramatically enlarge the border military footprint with soldiers and airmen from around the country.
Some wondered why he didn’t ask governors from the four states that border Mexico for more part-time troops. Democrats and cynics had an answer — Election Day.
Asked how long the mission might last, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said: “Probably until the day after the election.”
The president’s border rhetoric came amid a political landscape that could result with Democrats retaking the U.S. House and Republicans holding, and perhaps expanding, their Senate majority.
Trump appears to be trying to pull undecided voters toward Republican candidates and, more importantly, mobilize voters to go to the polls, Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said.
Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson called the strategy a full-court press designed to bring immigration, border security, law and order and the nature of American citizenship into play.
By threatening Tuesday to use an executive order to end birthright citizenship, Trump is questioning the legitimacy of ethnic groups, he said.
“There are certain people who simply are not easily Americanized, not welcomed into American community and pose a danger. This is a very old American story and we just haven’t seen it this explicitly in recent times.”
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, initially said the military “partnership” with Customs and Border Protection would enhance the capabilities of federal agents, but he also has called the deployment “neither sensible nor responsible.”
Cuellar noted that Trump had attacked Mexicans early in his presidential campaign.
“That’s his basic ammo,” Cuellar said. “If he’s going to go after somebody, he delegitimizes that person or that group and that’s what he’s doing, saying immigrants shouldn’t even be here because they’re not U.S. citizens, and they shouldn’t count.”
Politicizing the military
Some worry that Trump’s repeated invoking of the need for troops will have an unintended consequence — tainting public perception of the military by leaving a partisan smell on a deliberately apolitical institution.
“I feel bad for everyone from Secretary Mattis … down to the fine young men and women who’ve volunteered to serve our country that they’re being used for this political stunt,” conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted. “But I’m sure they’ll handle this with their usual competence and professionalism.”
Mattis rejected the notion that troops were being used to improve Republican election chances, telling reporters: “We don’t do stunts in this department, thank you.”
Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said he didn’t fear a loss of support for the armed forces.
“We don’t want to hear one word of the Joint Chiefs pushing back in public on the president of the United States unless they receive an illegal order,” he said. “The Congress, the media, the court system, the voters can push back.”
Hayden, who served 41 years in the Air Force, said he understands Mattis and other leaders must follow lawful orders, noting that he and other retired military officers are speaking up because “people in government can’t.”
“What I’m concerned about is the whole dilemma now being placed on senior officers to faithfully carry out the orders of the president … in a highly political context,” Hayden said.
“This is usually about senior officials, not battalion commanders or anything like that, but I often (ask) at what point do you cease being a guardrail and you become an enabler or a legitimizer for actions we should not be taking,” he said. “This may not be sufficient for many people, and I have no right to judge, but I do understand that there may come such a moment.”