The White House flatly rejected a report on Friday that said President Trump is weighing plans to mobilize thousands of National Guard soldiers to begin apprehending criminal illegal aliens across the country.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters aboard Air Force One “this is not true” and that the Department of Homeland Security “also confirms it is 100 [percent] false.”
He made the comment after the Associated Press reported that Trump could use “as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.”
The AP report claimed that administration officials have been circulating an 11-page document over the last two weeks that proposed sweeping immigration enforcement actions in border states California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. A copy of the memo outlines a plan in which agency heads at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Center for Border Protection would “immediately engage” with governors in border states to allow “qualified members of a state militia or state defense force… to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States.”
The AP characterized the memo as coming from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly himself, but a law enforcement official familiar with the situation said it was “a very early, pre-decisional draft that never made it to the secretary and was never seriously considered by the Department.”
The administration’s swift denial of the memo came after the AP’s several requests for comment went unanswered, according to the outlet’s own report on Friday.
“It’s incorrect. The Department is not considering mobilizing the National Guard for immigration enforcement,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told the Washington Examiner.
A spokesman for the National Guard said he was only just learning about the order from reporters calling for comment and would need some time to issue any sort of formal response or statement.
Trump has promised to enforce strict immigration laws that were sidestepped or largely ignored under the previous administration, and recently expanded the definition of “criminal illegal alien” in an executive order issued earlier this month.
