By electing President Donald Trump, voters told public officials they want a remedy to the disastrous southern border. Trump and his team got to work on day one with a flurry of executive orders aimed at illegal immigration, including engaging the military and National Guard at the border. Before his first week was out, troops were sent to the border with a promise from the Department of Defense (DOD) that more will be sent.
But an element of opposition to Trump’s border agenda lives within the DOD, according to a CNN report.
“The Trump administration asked the military earlier this week to be prepared to deploy up to 10,000 active duty troops immediately, setting off a scramble inside the Pentagon,” an official and another person familiar with the matter told CNN. “Military officials have pushed back on that because they believe that sending so many troops to the border at once could pull them away from other mission requirements elsewhere in the world and strain resources, the first official said.”
It is a troubling sentiment considering the DOD has a history of misleading Trump. In 2019, DOD officials told Trump the troop count in Syria was around 200 when it was closer to 900, Jim Jeffrey, former U.S. special representative for Syria engagement, said in 2020 interview with Defense One.
The DOD should be building trust with the new administration, not eroding it in background conversations with CNN that cast doubt on the DOD’s commitment to complete the border mission.
Despite this, and challenges unique to homeland deployment, the military has responded noticeably to Trump’s executive order, “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States.” The order gives the military 10 days to deliver a plan for how it will seal the borders and maintain U.S. sovereignty.
Beyond a written plan, it acted immediately. U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) reported some 1,500 active-duty personnel from the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps were deploying to the southern border in the first week, to augment the approximately 2,500 service members already deployed to support Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) southern border mission.
USNORTHCOM is the DOD’s operational lead for using U.S. military forces to carry out Trump’s orders. It has begun a 30-day planning effort.
“U.S. Northern Command is aggressively bolstering security at the southern border,” Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, USNORTHCOM commander said in a statement. “For initial actions, Soldiers and Marines are immediately deploying to seamlessly integrate with forces already along the border and working together with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection. In a matter of days, we will have nearly doubled the number of forces along the border, effectively implementing the president’s intent while planning and posturing for expanded efforts to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States.”
Certain legal obstacles, bureaucracies, and perceptions complicate the use of troops within the U.S., creating a reluctance to engage in homeland missions, according to a recently retired Army colonel who spoke with The Federalist.
“The general officers on active duty are extraordinarily reluctant to use active-duty forces on border missions,” he said, adding they view such missions as highly political and wish to distance themselves from that. The missions can be high risk. “If you get into a gunfight with a cartel, it’s going to be on the front page of the Washington Post and New York Times the next day.”
Another concern is “consuming readiness,” meaning a brigade sent to the border is not available to do other missions or train for war fighting readiness at a high level.
A border assignment is viewed as less prestigious than going into a combat zone where there are rewards associated with that combat zone service, the retired Army colonel said.
“If you’re an intelligence officer, going down the border is probably going to be a pretty interesting assignment. If you’re an aviation officer, it’s not only an interesting assignment, you’re going to be able to put a lot of flight hours on your helicopters. So you’re going to do real world missions. But if you’re an infantry unit, or an armor unit, and you’re just doing basic border security, in the terms of sitting in observation posts or guard towers. That’s a boring, boring mission.”
And within the U.S., the federal military is always subordinate to another agency, he said, in this case the DOD is subordinate to either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice. It means military members do not have the legal authority to stop and arrest illegal border crossers. They can only report crossings to Border Patrol.
However, the National Guard can be the lead agency when acting under state law, depending on how it is activated.
The National Guard can be mobilized and federalized under Title 10 status. In this case, it becomes part of the active army and is considered a federal unit. This is the status used when the National Guard was deployed to Afghanistan. They get called, train for 60 to 90 days, then they deploy as part of the active Army. They are paid federally. As a federal unit in this case, the National Guard falls under the Posse Comitatus Act, limiting the federal government from using the military to enforce domestic policy. This is why they can’t arrest border crossers.
But the National Guard can be used by state’s in active duty. That is the status of Operation Lone Star, the Texas border support mission. Here, the state funds the paychecks, and the governor deploys them. But because they are not federal military, Posse Comitatus does not apply.
Another activation status is Title 32, which allows the National Guard to be used under the governor’s authority but the federal government pays for it. States are reimbursed by the federal government, but it can take over a year to get the reimbursement. That messes with state budgets and because of that, states don’t like that option, the Army colonel said.
These are some of the planning details that must be ironed out.
There are also logistical details to refine. A deployment like this requires defined legal authorities and rules of engagement, plus housing, food, showers, fuel, transportation all delivered and sustained in very remote sections of the border.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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