Thread: Pentagon rejected request for troops to act as emergency law enforcement at border

Pentagon rejected a White House request


The Trump administration wanted troops at the southern border to act as emergency law enforcement. Defense officials said no.


Pentagon rejected request for troops to act as emergency law enforcement at border

By Ryan Browne and Nicole Gaouette, CNN
Updated 9:08 PM ET, Fri November 2, 2018

Washington (CNN)When the Trump administration first asked the Pentagon to send troops to the southern border, they wanted them to perform emergency 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.



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The Pentagon rejected the request on October 26, according to one of the officials, even as it signed off on providing DHS with air and logistics support, medical personnel and engineers.

The request was turned down because the Department of Defense felt that active duty troops do not have the authority to conduct that type of mission unless they are granted additional authorities by the President.

Defense officials have repeatedly emphasized the troops at the border are there to support civil authorities and that they are not expected to come into any contact with migrants.

Despite multiple defense officials characterizing those activities as relating to law enforcement actions, a DHS official disagreed that such functions constituted law enforcement.

"While DHS has discussed the need for potential assistance with force protection of CBP personnel, calling this line of support 'law enforcement activities' would be factually inaccurate," the DHS official said.

'Quickly and for a long time'

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.



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The first defense official said that in its response to DHS, the Defense Department said that if Homeland Security officials still want the reserve force of US troops, they should ask the White House to formally grant the Pentagon the authorities to perform those additional functions.

Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, speaking to Fox News last week, said DHS had asked for air, engineering, logistics and planning support, as well as vehicle barriers and "ways in which we can protect my officers and agents, as well as the ports of entry themselves."

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.

Costs of the operation

More than 8,000 active duty troops could be deployed troops to the southwest border, more than he has serving in some of the world's most contentious combat zones, but they are there solely to support Homeland Security officials as they prepare for the migrants' arrival.

The troops will join over 2,000 National Guardsmen who are already at the border, meaning upwards of 10,000 American forces will be mobilized to stop Central American migrants that are still some hundreds of miles away from the border and weeks away from arriving in the US

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."

The Pentagon has yet to determine the cost of the operation, nor has it identified the account where the funding would come from. But the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates that the cost of placing active duty troops on the border could range from $42 million 110 million.

Trump: Up to 15,000 troops going to the border 01:56

CSBA says that on the high end, the deployment would cost $143 per troop per day for operating and maintenance costs and $112 per troop per day on the low end. CSBA also estimates that the use of military aircraft in this deployment would cost about $136,645 per day.

With the mission currently set for November 5 through December 15, for a total of 41 days, the cost of deploying 8,000 troops and air support ranges from approximately $42 million to $55 million, according to the CSBA estimate.

Trump has said the total number of troops could climb as high as 15,000, which CSBA calculates the price tag to be at approximately $90 million to $110 million.

On Thursday, Trump claimed the military is putting up thousands of tents to hold migrants, but officials said there are no plans as of now to build tents. The officials said that while there had been informal talks between the Department of Defense and DHS about having the military build tent facilities to house detained migrants, tents were never part of the formal request for assistance submitted by DHS and approved by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. One official says that DHS was informally discouraged from making the request by the defense department.

https://nbc16.com/news/local/oregoni...-and-statewide

I expect the orders from the White House will be coming next week with the Executive Order.

Someone needs to hunt down these "DOD officials" talking company business with the media.

LEAKER ALERT!!

Pentagon denied White House request for troops to perform law enforcement services at border: report

BY JOHN BOWDEN - 11/02/18 06:07 PM EDT 806

11,934

© Getty Images

The Pentagon rejected a request from the White House last month to allow U.S. troops to perform emergency law enforcement tasks along the U.S.-Mexico border, CNN reported on Friday.

Two unnamed Defense Department officials familiar with the request told CNN that the White House requested a reserve force authorized to provide "crowd and traffic control" to areas along the border and to protect Border Patrol personnel ahead of the arrival of thousands of migrants preparing to apply for asylum in the U.S.

But on Oct. 26, the Pentagon rejected the request according to CNN, because the Defense Department felt that the tasks fell outside the scope of active duty soldiers' authority.

Officials at the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill, while a Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the issue when reached by email.

News of the White House's request comes despite assurances from defense officials that any troops deployed to the border would not come in to contact with a caravan of migrants currently headed to the U.S. southern border, and would only support local law enforcement personnel.

The Defense Department on Monday announced the deployment of more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border, which joined nearly 2,100 National Guard troops already stationed at the border to assist Homeland Security personnel.

“By the end of this week will we deploy over 5,200 soldiers to the southwest border. That is just the start of this operation; we’ll continue to adjust the numbers and inform you of those,” a spokesman said.

President Trump said later in the week that he could deploy as many as 15,000 troops to the border in total, which would equal more total service members than the U.S. currently has stationed in Afghanistan.

"As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out.

We have about 5,000. We'll go up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and everybody else at the border," he told reporters at the White House just two days after the announced deployment of 5,200 troops.

"Nobody is coming in. We're not allowing people to come in," he added.

This article was updated at 8:11 p.m.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4...aw-enforcement

"Nobody is coming in. We're not allowing people to come in," he added.

OR

Caravan asylum seekers can enter at ports of entry only, Trump

Just reporters with their wires crossed because they aren't speaking with actual officials who actually know what is or is not being done and going on from one day to the next, seems to me. We'll see what happens, I think it's going to work very well and be very exiting to see, at least whatever we can see, there will be a lot of stuff where reporters and cameras won't be allowed access so we may not know everything going on, at least not from the media.

US troops arrive in Arizona for border mission - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxQaUQ4oIyo

0:46

1 day ago - Uploaded by Associated Press
(1 Nov 2018) U.S. troops from Fort Campbell, Kentucky arrived in southern Arizona to help border patrol ...

If our troops are on Federal Land they should DENY the media access!

This is a military mission, make it top secret...no access to civilians for safety reasons!

Originally Posted by Beezer

If our troops are on Federal Land they should DENY the media access!

This is a military mission, make it top secret...no access to civilians for safety reasons!

Absolutely! And for their own safety as well.

Originally Posted by Beezer

If our troops are on Federal Land they should DENY the media access!

This is a military mission, make it top secret...no access to civilians for safety reasons!

They invite the media in to take pictures so the pictures will get to the caravan in an attempt to scare them into not going to the border. It's all part of the plan.

Fox News only...NO fake news media allowed!